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THE 

JOHN FRITZ 

MEDAL 



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COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE JOHN FRITZ MEDAL BOARD OJF AWARD^N EWYORK 
^TiTn¥d, ENGRAVED AND PRINTED BY BARTLETT ORR PRESS, NEW YORK 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Facsimile of the First Diploma issued 4 

The John Fritz Medal 9 

Trust Funds n 

Rules of Award 12 

Directors 14 

Medallists 19 

John Fritz, Biographical Notice of 23 

Lord Kelvin (William Thomson), Biographical Notice of 31 

George Westinghouse, Biographical Notice of ... . 37 

Alexander Graham Bell, Biographical Notice of . . . 43 

Thomas Alva Edison, Biographical Notice of ... . 49 

Charles Talbot Porter, Biographical Notice of . . . 55 

Alfred Noble, Biographical Notice of 61 

Sir William Henry White, Biographical Notice of . . 67 

Robert W. Hunt, Biographical Notice of 73 

John Edson Sweet, Biographical Notice of 79 

James Douglas, Biographical Notice of 83 

Elihu Thomson, Biographical Notice of 89 

Henry M. Howe, Biographical Notice of 95 

J. Waldo Smith, Biographical Notice of 99 

General George W. Goethals, Biographical Notice of . 105 

Orville Wright, Biographical Notice of in 

Sir Robert A. Hadfield, Biographical Notice of . . . 117 

Charles Prosper Eugene Schneider, Biographical Notice of 123 



[ 7 ] 



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THE JOHN FRITZ MEDAL 




HE John Fritz Medal is a gold medal presented for 
achievement in applied science, as a memorial to the 
great engineer whose name it bears. In 1892, just 
after Mr. Fritz's seventieth birthday, a number of 
his friends, representing membership in all the engi- 
neering societies, united to tender him a dinner in 
celebration of his birthday. The dinner was held in the Opera House 
of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Mr. Fritz's home city, and the affection 
and devotion of all who were assembled centered in a mock trial after 
the banquet. The victim was accused of having made the city of 
Bethlehem a place where grass no longer grew between the stones in 
the streets and a place where the meadow by the river had no longer 
an opportunity to feed the common or bucolic pig because of the 
enormous production of pigs of another sort which was a feature of 
that area. He had, it was alleged, made hollow forgings so that the 
content of phosphorus might escape through the hollow of the mandril 
through which they were forged, and there were other high misde- 
meanors of success with which he was charged. 

In 1902, when his eightieth birthday was approaching, the idea of a 
similar celebration and social event was canvassed, but in view of the 
merely temporary and effervescent character of such a celebration, 
there was born a larger concept of a fund, to be subscribed by the 
same persons who would attend such a dinner, the income to be used 
in creating each year a John Fritz Medal for scientific and industrial 
achievement in any field of pure or apphed science. The idea was 
received with acclaim and the fund necessary was raised in a very 
short time. The names of subscribers to the fund are on record in 
an album which the executors of Mr. Fritz have turned over to the 
American Society of Mechanical Engineers for safekeeping. A com- 
mittee was appointed consisting of representatives from the American 
Society of Civil Engineers, American Institute of Mining Engineers, 
American Society of Mechanical Engineers and American Institute 
of Electrical Engineers. This committee secured an appropriate design 

[ 9 1 



THE JOHN FRITZ MEDAL 

_> — _^ .- — *— 

of a medal by Mr. Victor D. Brenner and the first impression from 
the artist's design was cast and given to Mr. Fritz himself at an im- 
portant dinner held in the Waldorf Hotel, New York, which strained 
the capacity of the great ballroom to its limit. After the die of the 
medal had been completed, the committee which had been appointed 
by the several societies was continued as the John Fritz Medal Fund 
Corporation. Four members from each of the engineering societies 
named are appointed by the governing board of such society to serve 
for four years. 



[ 10 ] 



CScE 



TRUST FUNDS 




HE trust funds supporting the medal are held and 
administered by a board of sixteen directors, consist- 
ing of four from each of the four national engineering 
societies, which are in the order of their foundation : 
American Society of Civil Engineers, American 
Institute of Mining Engineers, American Society of 
Mechanical Engineers, and American Institute of Electrical Engineers. 
The term of service of each director is four years ; the term of one 
director from each society expires annually and a new appointment 
or a re-appointment becomes necessary. The table on pages i6, 17 
and 18 gives the names and years of those who have served from the 
establishment of the medal, in 1903, to the present. The Board of 
Directors is incorporated. The same persons, however, under a sepa- 
rate organization and with separate minutes serve as a Board of Award. 
Both boards meet on the evening of the third Friday in January. 



[ II ] 



RULES OF AWARD 



1. The John Fritz Medal was established by the professional 
associates and friends of John Fritz, of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 
U. S. A., on August 21, 1902, his eightieth birthday, to perpetuate 
the memory of his achievements in industrial progress. 

2. The medal shall be awarded for notable scientific or industrial 
achievement. There shall be no restriction on account of nationality 
or sex. 

3. The medal shall be of gold and shall be accompanied by an 
engraved certificate, which shall recite the origin of the medal, and 
the specific achievement for which the award is made. Such certificate 
shall be signed by the Chairman and Secretary of the Board of Award. 

4. The medal may be awarded annually, but not oftener. 

5 . No award of the medal shall be made to any one whose eligibility 
to the distinction has not been under consideration by the Board of 
Award for at least one year. 

6. Awards shall be made by a board of sixteen, appointed or chosen 
in equal numbers from the membership of the four natipnal societies : 
American Society of Civil Engineers, American Institute of Mining 
Engineers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and American 
Institute of Electrical Engineers. The governing bodies of each of 
those societies shall be requested to appoint from its membership one 
representative who shall hold office for one year, one for two years, 
one for three years, and one for four years ; and each succeeding year 
to appoint one member to serve for four years. 

7. In case of failure of any of the national societies to make the 
original appointments as requested, the selection of representatives 
from its membership shall be made by those appointed from the other 
societies, and should any future vacancy occur by reason of the failure 
of any of the said societies to act, or otherwise, such vacancy shall be 
filled by the Board of Award, from the membership of the Society 
so failing. 

[ 12 ] 



RULES OF AWARD 

-♦ — ' --«— 

8. Should one or more of the four national societies go out of 
existence, its representation on the Board shall cease and terminate, 
and future awards shall be made by the representatives of the remain- 
ing societies. 

9. The vote of the Board of Award shall be by letter-ballot, which 
shall be canvassed not less than thirty days subsequent to its issue, 
and the affirmative vote of at least three-fourths of the Board of 
Award shall be necessary for an award. 



[13] 



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DIRECTORS 



AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS 

Onward Bates, 1910-1913. President, 191 1 

G. H. Benzenberg, 1 908-191 1 

J. James R. Croes, 1903 

Fayette S. Curtis, 1920 to date 

Arthur P. Davis, 192 1 to date 

M. T. Endicott, 19 12-19 15 

Charles Hermany, 1904-1907 

Clemens Herschel, 19 17-1920. President, 19 19 

Charles Warren Hunt, 1903-1918. Secretary, 1903-1912. President, 1915 

Charles Macdonald, 1909-19 12 

Charles D. Marx, 19 16-19 19 

Robert Moore, 1 903-1904 

Alfred Noble, 1903-1905. President, 1903. Medallist, 1910 

John A. Ockerson, 19 13-19 16 

George H. Pegram, 19 18-192 1. Treasurer, 1920-192 1 

C. C. Schneider, 1905-1908. President, 1907 

Frederic P. Stearns, 1906-1909 

George F. Swain, 1914-1918 

Arthur N. Talbot, 19 19 to date 

George S. Webster, 1922 



AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF MINING AND METALLURGICAL 

ENGINEERS 

Christopher R. Corning, 19 16 to date 

James Douglas, 1903-1911. President, 1904. Medallist, 1915 

Herbert Hoover, 1920 to date 

James F. Kemp, 1912-1915. President, 1912. Secretary, 1914-1915 

Charles Kirchhoff, 1903-1914. Treasurer, 1903-1909. Secretary, 19 13 

Robert V. Norris, 1912-1913 

Eben E. Olcott, 1903-1911 

Charles F. Rand, 19 15 to date. Secretary, 19 16 to date 

Albert Sauveur, 1913^1916. President, 19 16 

E. Gybbon Spilsbury, 1903-1912, 1914-1919. President, 1908 

Benjamin B. Thayer, 1917 to date. President, 1920. Treasurer, 1922 

[ 14] 



DIRECTORS— Continued 



AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS 

John A. Brashear, 1911-1919 

James M. Dodge, 1904-1907 

John R, Freeman, 1913-1920. President, 1913 

W. F. M, Goss, 1912, 191 9. Treasurer, 19 19 

C. Wallace Hunt, 1909-19 11 

Robert W. Hunt, 1 903-1 905. Medallist, 19 12 

Frederick R. Hutton, 1908-1918. Treasurer, 1910-1918 

Gaetano Lanza, 1903 

W. M. McFarland, 192 1 to dat 

Fred J, Miller, 1920 to date 

Henry B. Sargent, 1920 to date 

Ambrose Swasey, 1907-1910, 1914 to date. President, 1917, 1921 

John E. Sweet, 1903-1908. President, 1905. Medallist, 1914 

Henry R. Towne, 1906-1913. President, 1909 

S. T. Wellman, 1903-1906 



AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS 

Comfort A. Adams, 19 19 to date. President, 1922 

Bion J. Arnold, 1 904-1 907 

A. W. Berresford, 1921 to date 

H. W. Buck, 19 1 7-1920 

John J. Carty, 1916-1919. President, 1918 

Gano Dunn, 1912-1915. President, 1914 

Lewis A. Ferguson, 1909-19 12 

Carl Hering, 1 903-1904 

Dugald C. Jackson, 1911-1914 

Arthur E. Kennelly, 1903 

John W. Lieb, Jr., 1905-1908 

Paul M. Lincoln, 19 15— 19 19 

C. O. Mailloux, 1914-1917 

William McClellan, 1922 

Ralph D. Mershon, 19 13-19 16 

E. Wilbur Rice, Jr., 1918-1922 

Charles F. Scott, 1 903-1 906. President, 1906 

Samuel Sheldon, 1907-1910. President, 1910 

Charles P. Steinmetz, 1903-1905 

L. B. Stillwell, 1910-1913 

Henry G. Stott, 1908-19 11 

Calvert Townley, 1920 to date 

Schuyler S. Wheeler, 1906-1909 

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J. F. Kemp 
Charles WarrenHunt 
F. R. Hutton 


Charles Macdonald 
Onward Bates 
Charles Warren Hunt 
M. T. Endicott 


E. Gybbon Spilsbury 
R. V. Norris 
Charles Kirchhoff 
J. F. Kemp 


W. F. M. Goss 
Henry R. Towne 
John A. Brashear 
F. R. Hutton 


Lewis A. Ferguson 
L. B. Stillwell 
Dugald C. Jackson 
Gano Dunn 




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Charles Warren Hunt 
F. R. Hutton 


G. H. Benzenberg 
Charles Macdonald 
Onward Bates 
Charles Warren Hunt 


E. E. Olcott 
E. Gybbon Spilsbury 
James Douglas 
Charles Kirchhoff 


F. R. Hutton 
C. Wallace Hunt 
Henry R. Towne 
John A. Brashear 


Henry G. Stott 
Lewis A. Ferguson 
L. B. Stillwell 
Dugald C. Jackson 




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Samuel Shelden 
Charles Warren Hunt 
F. R. Hutton 


Charles Warren Hunt 
G. H. Benzenberg 
Charles Macdonald 
Onward Bates 


Charles Kirchhoff 
E. E. Olcott 
E. Gybbon Spilsbury 
James Douglas 


Ambrose Swasey 
F. R. Hutton 
C. Wallace Hunt 
Henry R. Towne 


Samuel Sheldon 
Henry G. Stott 
Lewis A. Ferguson 
L. B. Stillwell 




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Henry R. Towne 
Charles Warren Hunt 
Charles Kirchhoff 


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Charles Warren Hunt 

G. H. Benzenberg 

Charles Macdonald 


James Douglas 
Charles Kirchhoff 
E. E. Olcott 
E. Gybbon Spilsbury 


Henry R. Towne 
Ambrose Swasey 
F. R. Hutton 
C. Wallace Hunt 


S. S. Wheeler 
Samuel Sheldon 
Henry G. Stott 
Lewis A. Ferguson 




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Charles Warren Hunt 
Charles Kirchhoff 


Charles C, Schneider 
Frederic P. Stearns 
Charles Warren Hunt 
G. H. Benzenberg 


E. Gybbon Spilsbury 
James Douglas 
Charles Kirchhoff 
E. E. Olcott 


John E. Sweet 
Henry R. Towne 
Ambrose Swasey 
F. R. Hutton 


John W. Lieb, Jr. 
S. S. Wheeler 
Samuel Sheldon 
Henry G. Stott 




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American 
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American 

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American 

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[ i8a ] 



THE JOHN FRITZ MEDAL HAS BEEN CONFERRED 

on the FOLLOWING DISTINGUISHED 

ENGINEERS 



1902 -JOHN FRITZ 
For scientific and industrial achievement 



1905 -LORD KELVIN 
For work in cable telegraphy and other general scientific achievements 

1906 -GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE 
For the invention and development of the air-brake 

1907-ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 
For the invention and introduction of the telephone 

1908 -THOMAS ALVA EDISON 

For the invention of the duplex and quadruplex telegraph ; the phonograph; 

the development of a commercially practical incandescent lamp ; the 

development of a complex system of electric lighting, including 

dynamos, regulating devices, underground system, 

protective devices and meters 

1909 -CHARLES TALBOT PORTER 

For his work in advancing the knowledge of steam engineering and 

improvements in engine construction 

1910 -ALFRED NOBLE 
For notable achievements as a civil engineer 

1911- SIR WILLIAM HENRY WHITE 
For notable achievements in naval architecture 

1912 -ROBERT WOOLSTON HUNT 

For his contributions to the early development of the Bessemer process 

[ 19] 



THE MEDALLISTS — Continued 



■~^ 



1914 -JOHN EDSON SWEET 

For his achievements in machine design; and for his pioneer work in 

applying sound engineering principles to the construction and 

development of the high-speed steam engine 

1915 -JAMES DOUGLAS 

For notable achievements in mining, metallurgy, education 

and industrial welfare 



1916-ELIHU THOMSON 

For achievements in electrical invention, in electrical engineering and 

industrial development, and in scientific research 

1917- HENRY MARION HOWE 

For his investigations in metallurgy, especially in the 

metallography of iron and steel 

1918 -J. WALDO SMITH 

For achievement as engineer in providing the City of New York 

with a supply of water 

1919 -GENERAL GEORGE W. GOETHALS 
For achievement as builder of the Panama Canal 

1920 - ORVILLE WRIGHT 
For achievement in the development of the airplane 

1921 -SIR ROBERT A. HADFIELD 
For the invention of manganese steel 

1922 -CHARLES PROSPER EUGENE SCHNEIDER 

For achievement in metallurgy of iron and steel, for development of modern 

ordnance, and for notable patriotic contribution to 

the winning of the Great War 

[ 20] 



JOHN FRITZ 




CScSB 



=0555 



JOHN FRITZ 




OHN FRITZ was born August 21, 1822, in London- 
derry, Chester County, Pa. His grandfather, Johannes 
Fritzius, of Hesse Cassel, settled in Pennsylvania in 
1802. His father, George Fritz, married the daughter 
of a Scotch-Irish immigrant. They had seven children 
— four girls and three boys, of whom John was 
the first. His father, a millwright and mechanic, 



repeatedly followed the call of the trade which he loved better than 
farming ; and the three sons, inheriting his talent and his predilection, 
after dutifully following the plough in their youth, abandoned it for 
the pursuit of mechanical engineering, in which, educating themselves 
without the aid of technical instruction, they all achieved high position. 

Like other American boys, John Fritz had the benefit of some 
schooling ; but his epigrammatic summary : " Five days in the week, 
for three months in the year, is too short a time for the study of 
Bennett's Arithmetic," tells the whole story. The school of those 
days could only show the door, and give the key to those who would 
enter. Perhaps, after all, our modern systems accomplish little more ! 

In 1838, at the age of sixteen, he became an apprentice in the 
trades of blacksmith and machinist — the latter comprising repairs of 
agricultural and manufacturing machinery, including the simple blast 
furnaces of that day. 

In 1 844, he obtained employment in a rolling-mill, then in process 
of erection, at Norristown, Pa. After it started, he was put in charge of 
all the machinery, and he seized the opportunity to master thoroughly 
the thing nearest to him, outside of his immediate task. This happened 
to be the puddling furnace. After working through a long day at his 
job as superintendent and repairer of machinery, he spent the evening 
in the exhausting work of a common puddler, studying the apparatus 
and the process, while he rabbled or drew the glowing charge. Months 
of such toil and thought made him at last not only a master puddler 
but also an expert, qualified to improve the old construction and 
practice. Before long he was the Superintendent of the whole works, 
with the hearty support, not only of the proprietors, who knew his 
value, but also of the workmen, whose comrade and friend he had 
been — as, to the end of his life, he continued to be. 

In 1849, he accepted a position in connection with a new rail mill 
and blast furnace, at Safe Harbor, Pa. The salary was smaller 
($650 a year, instead of ^1000!) ; but he wanted to learn all about 
blast-furnace practice and the manufacture of rails. 



[ 25 ] 



THE MEDALLISTS 

— ►—• ■ ' >-<— 

His next engagement was in 1852, to superintend the rebuilding 
and improvement of the Kunzie blast furnace, on the Schuylkill, about 
twelve miles from Philadelphia. This involved the new method of 
manufacturing pig iron with anthracite, instead of charcoal or coke, as 
fuel — a scheme which had just been proved practicable by David 
Thomas and William Firmstone in the Lehigh valley. After the 
furnace had been put in blast and was running successfully, his 
desire to learn all about operation, as well as construction, led him to 
pursue his old habit of prowling about at odd times, day and night ; 
and in this way he discovered one of the most important principles of 
modern blast-furnace practice, namely, that of the " closed front," 
replacing the old fore-hearth and those frequent interruptions of the 
blast for cleaning out the crucible, known as "working " the furnace. 
This revolutionary change of practice was afterwards embodied and 
made more effective in the water-cooled cinder notch, patented by 
Liirmann, and now universally employed. 

In 1854, he became general superintendent of the Cambria Iron 
Works, Johnstown, Pa. This may be regarded as the turning point 
of his career. His preparation for it had occupied sixteen years, during 
which he had mastered every part of the manufacture of iron into 
commercial forms — the blast furnace, the foundry, the puddling 
furnace, the heating furnace and the rolling-mill — while he had also 
learned the higher art of commanding the enthusiastic loyalty of 
workmen, and the highest art of all, perhaps — that of securing the 
confidence of employers. 

All these patiently acquired qualifications were immediately 
demanded and tested in his new position, and the lack of any one of 
them would have been fatal to his success. Impending bankruptcy, 
requiring financial reorganization with fresh capital, and a disastrous 
fire, necessitating physical reconstruction, were surmounted by his 
courage and genius, aided by the faith of other men in him. 

Against much opposition, he introduced the three-high rolls into the 
Cambria Company's mill, laying thereby the foundation not only of 
unexampled prosperity for that establishment, but also of an improve- 
ment which was rapidly adopted throughout this country and the 
world, and has been justly called the last great step of progress in iron 
manufacture preceding the Bessemer process. 

He introduced also many other improvements which he had con- 
ceived in previous years, when as yet there was no opportunity to 
realize them — improvements in puddling furnaces, gearing, boilers, etc. 
One of his most characteristic and radical measures was the abandon- 
ment, in connection with the roll trains, of light coupling boxes and 
spindles, and a special "breaking box," holding the rolls in place — all 
of which were intended to break under special strain, so as to save the 
rolls from fracture. The continual breaking of these weak parts was 
to him a source of greater delay and loss than was likely to occur in 

[26] 



JOHN FRITZ 

_>_.. ♦- 

their absence. He said he "would rather have a grand smash up 
once in a while than be thus annoyed all the time!" And this 
remained his guiding principle as a mechanical engineer throughout 
his life. The structures and machines designed by him have been 
occasionally criticized, from the standpoint of theory, as unnecessarily 
costly at the outset, but, so far as we know, none of them ever failed 
in service. His trusses are still standing ; his engines are still running ; 
and perhaps his abundant "margins of safety" have proved to be 
worth more than they cost. 

After six years of continuous hard work with the Cambria Iron 
Company, Mr. Fritz accepted, in July, i860, the position of general 
superintendent and chief engineer of the Bethlehem Iron Company. 

The works of this company, designed and erected by Mr. Fritz, 
were so far completed by September, 1863, as to begin the rolling of 
rails made from the product of its own blast and puddling furnaces. 
It is impossible, as well as unnecessary, to narrate here the history of 
his connection with this enterprise. A few features of it, however, 
deserve mention, by reason of their relation to the general progress of 
iron metallurgy. 

The first of these was the introduction of high-pressure blast in 
the iron blast furnace. The iron-masters of the Lehigh valley were 
startled indeed when they learned that Fritz was blowing air at 12 
pounds per square inch, into his furnaces, and was prepared even to 
blow at 16 pounds in an emergency. This was the beginning of 
the new blast-furnace practice, in which rapid running, immense 
product and high blast, while creating fresh problems of blast-furnace 
management, have superseded many of the old ones. Fritz's horizon- 
tal blowing engines were much criticized at the time ; but they 
have run continuously, day and night, for more than thirty years, 
blowing at from 10 to 12 pounds pressure, and frequently more. 
He was so well satisfied with the result of his innovations in blast- 
furnace practice, that he designed a larger furnace, with an engine 
that would supply a 20- to 30-pound blast. But, to his great regret, 
the directors of the company were too conservative to authorize this 
experiment. 

During the Civil War, the Government needed a rolling-mill some- 
where in the South, in which rails torn from the track, twisted and 
deformed by Confederate raiders, could be re-rolled for renewed use. 
Mr. Fritz was selected as one who could procure the necessary 
machinery and secure the erection of the mill with the least possible 
delay. He immediately prepared the plans and obtained the necessary 
machinery for the mill, which was built at Chattanooga, Tenn., and 
run successfully by his brother William until the end of the war. 

During nearly thirty years of work with Bethlehem Iron Company, 
Mr. Fritz, supported by the faith and courage which he inspired in other 
men, made that enterprise one of the most famous in the world. The 

[ 27 ] 



THE MEDA LLISTS 

introduction of open-hearth furnaces and of the Thomas basic process ; 
the progressive improvements of strength, simplicity, and automatic 
handhng in the rolling-mills ; the adoption of the Whitworth forging- 
press; the manufacture of armor-plate; the erection of a 125-ton 
steam hammer; and innumerable other improvements in the manu- 
facture of iron and steel, owe their present perfection in large degree 
to his inventive genius, practical resourcefulness, and patient study. 
The stamp of his mind may be found on almost every detail of con- 
struction and operation throughout a wide range of processes and 
products. 

In 1 892, at the age of seventy, he retired from this responsible and 
arduous work; but for nearly twenty years longer he lived to enjoy, 
as few men have been permitted to do, the fame and the friendships 
which he had amply earned. Indeed, he had received world-wide 
recognition before his retirement, and that event elicited numerous 
public expressions of the pre-existing fact. The American Institute 
of Mining Engineers, of which he had been a loyal member since 1872, 
elected him its President in 1894; the American Society of Mechanical 
Engineers, which he joined in 1882, made him an Honorary Member 
in 1892, and President in 1895; the American Society of Civil 
Engineers, of which he became a member in 1893, conferred Honorary 
Membership upon him in 1899; the Iron and Steel Institute of Great 
Britain made him an Honorary Member in 1893, and a perpetual 
Honorary Vice-President in 1909 ; and the recently organized American 
Iron and Steel Institute elected him an Honorary Member in 1910. 
Meanwhile, he had received the Bronze Medal of the U. S. Centennial 
Exposition in 1876; in 1893 the Bessemer Gold Medal of the Iron 
and Steel Institute; in 1902 the John Fritz Medal (the fund for which 
was established by subscription, to honor his eightieth birthday, by 
awarding a gold medal annually "for notable scientific or industrial 
achievement" — the first medal being bestowed with enthusiastic 
unanimity upon John Fritz himself); in 1904 the Bronze Medal of 
the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, in connection with which he 
served as Honorary Expert on Iron and Steel; and in 19 10, the 
Elliott Cresson Gold Medal of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, 
"for distinguished leading and directive work in the advancement of 
the iron and steel industries." And he received honoris causa the 
following academic degrees : Master of Arts, from Columbia University, 
in 1895; Doctor of Science, from the University of Pennsylvania, in 
1906; Doctor of Engineering, from the Stevens Institute of 
Technology, in 1907; and Doctor of Science, from Temple University, 
in 1910. 

But these official distinctions could not tell fully the story of love 
and praise which pressed for the utterance which it found on two 
memorable occasions — celebrations of his seventieth and eightieth 
birthday anniversaries, in which hundreds of his friends and 

[ 28 ] 



cap ~^ a' i ifc a 

^^^^ JOHN FRITZ _^ 

professional colleagues participated. The first took place at Bethlehem 
in 1892, and the second at New York in 1902. 

Lehigh University, located in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, 
was founded in 1866 by a Pennsylvanian — Asa Packer — who knew 
and appreciated the great qualities of John Fritz, and who named him 
as one of the original Board of Trustees. He was remarkably broad 
in his conceptions of education. Only a few years before his death, 
in commenting to a friend on the antagonism manifested by another 
distinguished iron-master to all forms of classical training, Mr. Fritz 
said: "I think a well-educated man ought to know something of Greek 
and Latin. If I had a son I would see that he had some knowledge of 
those languages in addition to his more practical studies. " 

In 1900, he gave to the University a fully equipped, up-to-date 
engineering laboratory. What is more, he acted as his own architect ; 
designed the building (substantially on the lines of the large shop he 
had built at the Bethlehem Steel Works); selected, purchased and 
installed the superb testing equipment; and renewed his youth in the 
task, which was a great pleasure to him. At his death, it was found 
that (after making generous provision for his near relatives, and for 
bequests to the Free Library of the Bethlehems, to St. Luke's 
Hospital at South Bethlehem, to Temple College at Philadelphia, to 
the Methodist Hospital at Philadelphia, to the American University 
at Washington, and to other charitable purposes) he had bequeathed 
his residuary estate, estimated to amount to about ^i 50,000, to Lehigh 
University, as an endowment fund for the maintenance and operation 
of this laboratory. 

Mr. Fritz retained much of his vigor and activity up to the autumn 
of 191 1. He took frequent trips alone to Philadelphia and New York, 
and attended many gatherings of his old engineering friends and asso- 
ciates. In 191 1, he wrote his Autobiography — an instructive and 
inspiring human document. 

And then came the beginning of the end. This literary work finished, 
the laboratory built, his affairs in good order, our dear old friend 
began to fail. But his life was prolonged by surgeons, physicians and 
nurses, aided by his own patient docility, strong will, rugged constitu- 
tion and genial humor, until February 13, 191 3, when he died quietly, 
without apparent pain, passing away in sleep. 

His funeral, held at Bethlehem on February 17, was attended by a 
large concourse of his friends ; and he lies at rest in the beautiful Nisky 
Hill cemetery of his home town, beside his only daughter, who died 
in childhood, and his beloved wife. 

So lived and died a great man — strong, wise, brave, invincible; a 
good man — simple, generous, tender and true ; a loving husband ; 
a loyal friend ; a public-spirited citizen ; a real philanthropist, giving 
"himself with his gift!" To us who miss and mourn him now, the 
man shines even more illustrious than the famous engineer. 

[ 29] 



LORD KELVIN 




CKIE 



3K:3 



LORD KELVIN 




LLIAM THOMSON was born in Belfast, Ireland, 
une 25, 1824. His father, James Thomson, pro- 
fessor of mathematics in an institute in Belfast, 
removed in 1832 to his alma mater at Glasgow, and 
William received his education in part from his 
father, and in part from the College of Glasgow. 
In 1845 he was graduated from St. Peter's College, 
Cambridge, where he won notable honors, being first Smith's prize- 
man of his year, as well as second wrangler. While at Cambridge, 
Thomson was devoted to athletics, and rowed in the winning boat in 
a race with Oxford. 

At the age of twenty-two, after several months spent in the labora- 
tory of Regnault, at Paris, Thomson became professor of natural 
history in the University of Glasgow, to which he always remained 
loyal. In 1896, half a century after his appointment, he received a 
wonderful tribute of admiration and affection, in which the university 
and civil authorities of Glasgow, leading scientific societies of America 
and Europe, and distinguished individuals, including the Prince and 
Princess of Wales, united by personal presence, formal addresses, 
letters, telegrams, and cable messages. He was elected Chancellor 
of the University in 1904. 

One of Professor Thomson's first great achievements was in over- 
coming the retardation affecting electrical signals sent through a 
submarine cable, which threatened to blur them beyond recognition. 
Faraday had previously furnished a partial solution; but Thomson 
invented the instrument which made it possible to transmit signals 
with reasonably satisfactory clearness and speed, and was retained as 
consulting engineer, both for the Atlantic cable of 1858 and for that 
of 1866. He was also electrical engineer for the French Atlantic 
cable in 1869, the Brazilian and River Plata cable in 1873, the West 
Indian cables in 1875, and the Mackay-Bennett cable in 1879. 

Moreover, Professor Thomson invented a method of testing the 
conductivity of a submarine wire while being laid, so that any defect 
might be promptly discovered and remedied. He also invented 
instruments for receiving messages. A mirror was so mounted on a 
tiny magnet that the feeble electric impulses traversing a cable caused 
it to sway, and a beam of light was deflected to the right and left, on 
a blank white surface in a dark room. The magnet being suspended 
by a silk fibre, its movements were virtually unimpeded by friction. 



[ 33] 



^ THE MEDAL LISTS 

This apparatus was supplemented by one which would leave a perma- 
nent trace on a strip of paper. This was called "the siphon recorder," 
and was employed to receive some of the greetings sent to its inventor 
in 1896. He was knighted in 1866, as one who had done more 
than any other scientific man to develop submarine telegraphy. 
Subsequently he devised a sending-key for use with a cable, and 
perfected apparatus for taking deep-sea soundings, thus greatly 
facilitating the exploration of cable routes. 

Two of Sir William Thomson's valuable inventions are his im- 
provements in the construction of the compass, and his provision for 
overcoming the influence of a ship's magnetism on that instrument. 
The compass card was lightened, and a large number of fine needles 
were substituted for the coarse ones formerly attached to it. To 
attain the other object, small globes of iron, the sizes and distance of 
which had been carefully computed, were placed near the compass on 
opposite sides. 

For measuring charges of static electricity. Sir William originated 
the quadrant electrometer, and made useful additions to other types 
of apparatus. One of the most important of his non-electrical inven- 
tions is a machine for predicting the level of the tides in any part of 
world. His wide experience, deep insight, and sound judgment made 
him an authority on electrical science. 

As early as 1848, Professor Thomson published an article on an 
absolute thermometric scale, and in 1854 he modified his proposition. 
Two long articles from his pen in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica " 
have been republished under the title, "On Heat and Electricity." 
His work in connection with Professor Tait, "A Treatise on Natural 
Philosophy," contains material of the highest value. 

While consistently conservative. Lord Kelvin took a deep and lively 
interest in the investigations regarding radium and radio-activity. He 
would not assent to the theory that one element could be evolved 
from another, or to the theory lately advanced, that the heat of the 
sun or the earth is due to radium, rather than to gravitation. 

Lord Kelvin's development of the relation which exists between 
heat and mechanical power enabled him to reconcile the diverse 
doctrines advocated by Joule and Carnot, and he co-operated with 
Joule in experiments which aided in dispelling the uncertainty relating 
to thermal effects in fluids. The results were communicated to the 
Royal Society in 1862. 

Lord Kelvin's other published writings are : " Electrostatics and 
Magnetism." (i vol.) ; "Mathematical and Physical Papers " (3 vols.) ; 
"Popular Lectures and Addresses" (3 vols.); and "Baltimore Lectures," 
delivered at Johns Hopkins University, in 1884. He visited Montreal 
in 1884, and Toronto in 1897 to attend meetings of the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science, these meetings being 
ordinarily held on the other side of the Atlantic. That he was made 

[ 34 1 



LORD KELVIN 
-.^^„ „^_ 

a peer by Queen Victoria at the opening of the year 1892, was a 
delight to his scientific friends, who felt not only that the honor was 
deserved, but also that it was a public though tardy recognition of the 
value of science. The title, Lord Kelvin, was suggested by the name 
of a stream, the Kelvin, that empties into the Clyde at Glasgow. 
The buildings of the University of Glasgow border on this stream. 

He received degrees from the leading universities of Great Britain 
and America. In 1893 he was elected an Honorary Member of 
the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. He was a foreign 
Associate of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, and an Honorary 
Member of other French scientific organizations. He was a Grand 
Officer of the Legion of Honor in France ; a Knight of the Grand Cross 
of the Royal Victorian Order; a Knight of the Order of Merit of 
France, and a Commander of the Order of Leopold of Belgium. He was 
also a member of the Order of the First Class of the Sacred Treasure 
of Japan, and of the Order of Merit established by Edward VII in 
1902. He had been President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the 
British Association for the Advancement of Science, and three times 
President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. As President of 
the Royal Society of London he attained an honor that has been 
regarded since Newton's day as the highest to which a British scientist 
could aspire. 

In death, as in life. Great Britain gratefully bestowed upon Lord 
Kelvin her highest honors; for he rests with Newton, Herschel, Darwin, 
and other illustrious dead, in the nave of Westminster Abbey. 



[35 ] 



GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE 




C:SE 



=1553 



GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE 




EORGE WESTINGHOUSE was born at Central 
Bridge, N. Y., October 6, 1846. He died in New 
York City, March 12, 1914. A few years after his 
birth, his father, who was a manufacturer of agri- 
cultural machinery, moved to Schenectady, where 
the boy attended the public schools and, outside of 
school hours and during vacations, studied mechanics 
and learned to handle machinery in his father's shop. 

When the Civil War came on, the patriotic ardor which filled the 
youth of the country drew young Westinghouse into the volunteer 
army. Although he was under the age for enlistment, his size and 
strength were such that he was admitted to the service, first joining 
the cavalry. In December, 1 864, he became an assistant engineer in the 
navy, serving in that capacity until August, 1865. 

After the war, he returned to Schenectady and entered Union College; 
but this was a classical institution, and the bent of young Westinghouse 
was in the direction of mathematics and engineering. Acting upon 
the advice of the President of the college, who felt that such latent 
ability should be given an unrestricted opportunity for growth, he left 
before graduation and started seriously upon his career in engineering. 
Putting the President's advice into practice, he took out his first 
patent. He had seen a crew of railroad men tediously working to 
replace a derailed car on the tracks and thought their primitive methods 
were wasting time. He invented a simple device for the operation 
and undertook to sell it to the railroads. 

On one of his journeys "frog selling," as he has called it, he was 
close to a collision of trains. The brakemen, tugging at their hand- 
brake wheels, did their best, but the best of handbrakes were primitive 
affairs, and in emergencies almost useless. He conceived the idea of 
instantly braking an entire train with some form of power-apparatus 
controlled by the locomotive engineer. In a year or so, after much 
experiment, he was satisfied that he had made a practical design, but 
he was without capital to manufacture the equipment of even a single 
train and to get the invention tried. He went to Pittsburgh, where he 
obtained encouragement enough to begin in a small way. He patented 
the air brake in 1 867. 

The first train to which this brake was applied ran west from Pitts- 
burgh on what is now a portion of the Pennsylvania Railroad. During 
the trial trip a collision with a loaded team stuck on a grade crossing 



[ 39 ] 



THE MEDALLISTS 

-►— ■■ - - ^.--«— 

was prevented. This practical illustration of the utility of the invention 
led to the adoption of the brake. Mr. Westinghouse, retaining the 
control of his invention, undertook to manufacture it, and organized 
the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, establishing at Pittsburgh the 
business which subsequently became the nucleus of the many industries 
associated with his name. He later applied compressed air to switch- 
ing and signaling, and utilized electricity in this connection. From 
this grew the Union Switch and Signal Company. 

His introduction of electricity into switch and signal work led him 
far into electrical experiment, and he devoted his energies to a cause 
in which few then believed, the adoption of the alternating current for 
lighting and power. In this he had to meet and overcome almost 
fanatical opposition, which in many States sought legislation against 
the use of the alternating current as dangerous to the public welfare. 
In 1885, he acquired the patents of Gaulard & Gibbs, and having 
undertaken a comprehensive study of the distribution and utilization 
of electrical currents in a large way, he personally devised apparatus 
and methods for the work, and gathered around him a group of men 
who were to become experts in the new electrical art. He also organ- 
ized the electrical company which bears his name and undertook the 
development and manufacture of the induction motor which made 
practicable the utilization of the alternating current for power. 

The Westinghouse Machine Company was established by Mr. 
Westinghouse in the eighties for the manufacture of high-speed steam 
engines, and at this plant has come in succession the construction of 
large steam engines, gas engines and steam turbines. 

Following the discovery of natural gas in the Pittsburgh region, 
Mr. Westinghouse devised a system for controlling the flow and for 
conveying the gas over long distances through pipe lines, thus 
supplying fuel to the homes and factories of Pittsburgh. He took 
up the study of the gas engine, and for ten years conducted a series 
of exhaustive experiments in this line, at the end of that time 
putting into commercial use a gas engine of large power for electric 
generating. 

Mr. Westinghouse introduced the Parsons steam turbine into this 
country, adding to it improvements and developments of his own, and 
others carried out under his supervision. The reduction gearing for 
driving the propeller shaft of a ship by means of a steam turbine was 
developed at the Machine Company's works, with the co-operation of 
the late Admiral Melville and John H. Macalpine. Very recently, 
also, the Westinghouse air spring for motor vehicles was brought out. 

It is impracticable to enumerate here the inventions which Mr. 
Westinghouse personally made or those which his staff made under 
his supervision. As a result of this work and enterprise, there 
grew up thirty corporations of which he was President at one time, 
employing 50,000 men, with works at Wilmerding, East Pittsburgh, 

[ 40 ] 



c am ^^2i ^m ^ "^ 

GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE 

Swissvale and Traff ord City, Pa. ; at Hamilton, Canada ; London and 
Manchester, England; Havre, France; Vardo, Italy; and at Vienna 
and St. Petersburg. 

Mr. Westinghouse made many visits to Europe in connection with 
his inventions and industries. There, as in his own country, he won 
the friendship of the foremost men of his time and the high esteem 
of the engineering profession. He has been decorated by the French 
Republic and by the sovereigns of Italy and Belgium ; and he was the 
second recipient of the John Fritz Medal "for the invention and de- 
velopment of the air brake," Lord Kelvin, his friend of many years, 
having been the first. The Konigliche Technische Hochschule, of 
Berlin, bestowed upon him the degree of Doctor of Engineering; and 
his own college. Union, gave him the degree of Ph.D. The Edison 
Gold Medal was presented to him in 19 12, for his "meritorious 
achievement in connection with the development of the alternating 
system for light and power." In 191 3, the Grashof medal of the 
Verein Deittscher Ingenieure, the highest honor in the gift of the 
engineering profession of Germany, was awarded to Mr. Westinghouse 
on the occasion of the official visit to Germany of the American Society 
of Mechanical Engineers, and accompanying the medal was a cer- 
tificate which read: "To George Westinghouse, who opened up new 
fields by his invention of the automatic railway brake, successfully 
fought for the introduction of the alternating current in the United 
States, and did useful work in the designing of high-speed machinery." 
Besides being a Past-President and Honorary Member of The American 
Society of Mechanical Engineers, Mr. Westinghouse was one of the 
two Honorary Members of the American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science and an Honorary Member of the National Electric 
Light Association. 



[41 ] 



ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 




C=cE 



aK:3 



ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 




H LEXANDER GRAHAM BELL has had the rarest 
of human experiences. He has Uved to see the 
dreams of his youth come true. When he talked 
into a repHca of the first telephone transmitter at 
the celebration of the completion of the New York- 
San Francisco telephone line, there were 9,000,000 
^ telephones in the Bell system, serving 100,000,000 
persons. Forty years ago. Bell talked of sending the human voice over 
electric wires, and men gaped at him in pity. 

The inventor of the telephone was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, 
March 3, 1847. He was the son of Alexander Melville Bell, the dean 
of British elocutionists and inventor of the system of "visible speech." 
The boy was educated at Edinburgh and London, and acquired a 
smattering of music, electricity and telegraphy. At the age of sixteen 
he taught elocution in British schools, and by the time he was of age 
he had met several noted scientists who encouraged him in his studies 
of sound. 

In 1870, he went to Canada, and the next year came to Boston as 
professor of vocal physiology in Boston University. His system of 
teaching deaf mutes won immediate recognition, and his success en- 
couraged him to open a school of his own. He went to live at the 
home of five-year-old Georgie Sanders, one of his pupils, in Salem, 
and in the Sanders cellar, after school hours, he started a series of 
inventions that were to culminate in the telephone. For three years, 
he worked with tuning-forks, magnets and batteries, and in 1874 he 
had evolved the idea for what he called his "harmonic telegraph." 
This was a device for sending a number of Morse messages over a 
single wire at the same time by utilizing the law of sympathetic vibra- 
tion. Bell used a telegraph transmitter and receiver, an electromagnet 
and a flattened piece of steel clock spring. 

One day in the winter of 1874, Bell took his harmonic telegraph 
to the electrical workshop of Charles Williams, of 109 Court Street, 
Boston, where Thomas A. Watson was employed. Watson made six 
instruments at Bell's instructions and thereafter devoted most of his 
time to working out in brass and iron the ideas that came pouring out 
of Bell's active brain. The two young men labored day and night at 
their experiments in the Williams workshop and out at Salem. All 
the while there was a dream that haunted Bell. It was that, somehow, 
some day he could get an electric wire to carry the human voice. On 

[45 ] 



a^ a = ^r ^ ' "^ :- r- [ K S3 

THE MEDALLISTS 

June 2, 1875, after months of countless experiments on the harmonic 
telegraph, something happened that convinced Bell that at last he was 
on the right track. One of the transmitter springs of his telegraph 
instrument stuck, and the magnetized steel generated a current that 
sent a faint noise over the electric wire to Bell's receiver. This was 
all the proof Bell needed to persuade him that the principles were 
right. Thereafter it was a question of working out details. 

On March 10, 1876, in a boarding-house at 5 Exeter Place, Boston, 
where the two were experimenting, Bell, in his room on the top floor, 
put his mouth to the telephone and said: 

"Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." Watson came rushing into 
the room shouting: *'I heard you; I could hear what you said!" 

Bell decided that he had made sufficient progress to justify him in 
exhibiting his invention at the Philadelphia Centennial. He was 
shoved into a corner and overlooked by the public until Dom Pedro, 
Emperor of Brazil, who knew Bell as a master of acoustics, happened 
along. Bell explained the telephone and persuaded the Emperor to 
listen at a receiver while he talked. Dom Pedro dropped the instru- 
ment, exclaiming: "My God, it speaks!" and the amazement of the 
distinguished visitor attracted attention to its cause. Bell and his 
invention were soon the main features of the Centennial. Bell 
returned to Boston to persuade an incredulous public that he had a 
practical means of instantaneous communication. It was no easy task. 
With a few loyal friends behind him he did heroic missionary work, 
lecturing up and down New England, everywhere prophesying that 
some day men would talk as readily from Boston to New York as from 
one room to another. The press reflected the universal scepticism; 
funds ran low. Those were dark days for the young inventor. But 
finally, in August, 1877, when Bell's patent was sixteen months old, 
there were 778 telephones in use, and the pioneers decided that the 
time had come to organize the business. "The Bell Telephone 
Association" was created with no capital and a membership of four 
men — Bell, Watson, Gardener G. Hubbard (Bell's father-in-law) and 
Thomas Sanders (father of Bell's pupil and sole financial backer of 
the telephone). 

Bell was an inventor, not a business man, and after 1877 he had 
little active connection with the organization of the telephone industry. 
He married in that year, and went abroad to help introduce the tele- 
phone in England. But before he sailed, he suggested to Watson that 
as soon as the telephone became a matter of routine business, the two 
should begin experimenting on flying machines. Watson turned to 
building battleships, but Bell, always a long way ahead of his time, 
took up the problems of flight with his characteristic energy. 

In February, 191 3, The Scientific American printed an account of 
patent No. 1,050,601, just issued. Dr. Bell received this for a vertical 
balancing rudder for aeroplanes, thirty-seven years after receiving 

[ 46] 



^^ ALEX AND ER G RAHAM BELL ^ 

patent No. 174,465 for the telephone. About two years later, he 
announced an attempt to be made by one of his assistants to cross 
the Atlantic in an aeroplane in seventy-two hours. To invent what 
has been called one of the seven modern wonders would satisfy most 
men, but it did not satisfy Alexander Graham Bell. 

While Theodore N. Vail and his associates were busy making Bell's 
membrane transmitter a universal household servant, Professor Bell 
was inventing a telephone probe for the painless detection of bullets 
in the human body and receiving for it the degree of M. D. from the 
University of Heidelberg. In 1883, Dr. Bell's name once more 
appeared before the public, associated this time with the names of 
C. A. Bell and Sumner Taintor in the invention of the graphophone. 
A little later he returned to his first love — the study of acoustics — 
and organized a movement for the teaching of speech to the deaf 
along the lines of visible speech. 

It has always been Dr. Bell's practice to keep complete records of 
his scientific researches, and the volumes into which these records are 
bound now number several hundred. They tell the story of an intel- 
lectual life of almost unprecedented activity. A recent visitor to 
Dr. Bell's home at Washington was permitted to examine records 
made from 1908 to 191 3. There were thirteen volumes, each as thick 
as a law book and each containing 500 pages. The index to one of 
these volumes covered such subjects as experiments on aircraft, the 
scientific breeding of sheep, the utilization of waste heat, a new metric 
system, experiments in preserving food, notes on eugenics and the 
biological history of a cat. 

Dr. Bell has received many honors. The honorary degree of M. D., 
awarded by the University of Heidelberg in 1886, on the 500th 
anniversary of its foundation, has been mentioned already. The 
French Government gave him in 1880 the Volta Prix, and he has 
received gold medals as follows : The London Society of Fine Arts 
(1902); the Royal Albert, the Elliott Cresson and the Hughes medal 
of the Royal Society of Arts ( 191 3). He is an Officer of the French 
Legion of Honor. He founded and endowed with ;^2 50,000 the 
American Society to Promote Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, of 
which he has been President, as also of the National Geographical 
Society. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and 
the American Philosophical Society, and Fellow of the American 
Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science, etc. 



[ 47 ] 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 




CSSB 



3KS! 



THOMAS A. EDISON 




j]HOMAS ALVA EDISON was born February ii, 
1847, ^t Milan, Ohio. His father was descended 
from a Dutch miller on the Zuyder Zee, who came to 
America and settled in New Jersey about 1735. 
His mother, who was of Scotch descent, had been 
a school-teacher, and educated him largely at home. 
At ten or twelve years of age, he became greatly 
interested in chemistry, and having procured some books on the 
subject, obtained permission to establish a laboratory in the cellar, 
where he continued for two years his studies and experiments. In 
order to earn money for apparatus and reagents, he then became a 
railroad newsboy, selling papers, magazines, candy, etc., on the Grand 
Trunk Railway. Part of a baggage -car was allowed him for his stock 
of goods, and into this space he moved his home laboratory. He also 
bought a printing-press and type, and published on the train a weekly 
journal, called "The Weekly Herald," of which he was proprietor, 
publisher, editor, compositor, pressman and distributor. 

A laboratory accident, which set fire to the baggage-car, put a 
summary end to this business; and at about fifteen years of age, the 
boy became a telegraph-operator, learning this trade through the favor 
of a station-master on the road, the life of whose child he had saved. For 
more than five years he worked in telegraph offices in different parts 
of the United States, continually experimenting and devising improve- 
ments in apparatus, and at last determined to seek his fortune in 
New York City, where he arrived, one morning in 1869, without 
money or acquaintances. Later in the day, he found a telegraph- 
operator who lent him a dollar. He applied for work in the Western 
Union ofifice, and while awaiting an answer, spent his time in the 
operating-room of the Gold Indicator Company. About the third day, 
there was an accident to the machinery, which he repaired so skillfully 
that he was made superintendent of the ofifice, at $300 a month. 

This was the beginning of Edison's real inventive and commercial 
career. He made inventions for which he received $40,000 ; and 
with this money he opened a factory in Newark, N. J., and became a 
manufacturer of stock-tickers and other electrical apparatus, employing 
more than 150 men. He also perfected several other important 
electrical inventions, such as the automatic-telegraph, by which more 
than 5000 words per minute were sent between distant cities. It 
was during this period that he invented the duplex and quadruplex 



[ 51 ] 



THE MED ALLISTS ^_^ 

telegraphs and the electromotograph. The quadruplex made it for 
the first time commercially practicable to send four messages at once, 
two in each direction, over one wire. For the electromotograph, which 
was made to order for the Western Union Telegraph Company, he 
received ^100,000. 

After Bell's telephone had been introduced, Edison devised for it an 
improved transmitter, which has been in universal use ever since. 
This invention also was sold to the Western Union for ;^ 100,000. 

In 1876, he removed from Newark to Menlo Park, N. J., making 
invention his life-profession. Here for nearly two years he continued 
to bring forth improvements in telegraph and telephone apparatus, 
etc. In the autumn of 1877, he startled the world with his phono- 
graph. This kept him very busy until the autumn of 1878, when he 
took up the electric light problem, and worked with unremitting ardor 
and fierce energy until, in October, 1879, he perfected the first 
incandescent lamp with its fragile carbon filament in vacuo. He pro- 
ceeded to complete an entire system of electric lighting, including a 
new type of dynamo, with an efficiency previously unknown. His 
successful development of the electric railway in 1880-82 was largely 
based on his efficient dynamo, the principles of which have remained 
a permanent feature of the art. 

This was one of the most intensely active periods of Edison's life. 
Between 1880 and 1887, he obtained more than 400 U. S. patents. 
In 1887, he removed to the new laboratory he had built at Orange, 
and soon after took up the further improvement of the phonograph, 
which had lain practically dormant for ten years. Within three years 
he had applied for 82 patents on the phonograph and its parts. 

In 1 89 1 he brought out an invention of profound and world-wide 
influence — his basic patent, covering apparatus for the making of 
motion -pictures . 

The next nine years of his life were devoted chiefly to the magnetic 
concentration of low grade iron-ores, concerning which he made many 
important inventions, and secured 50 patents. But the competition 
of the rich and cheap iron-ores of Lake Superior rendered this enter- 
prise unprofitable; and he reluctantly abandoned it, after spending 
upon it more than ^2,000,000. 

Returning to his laboratory, he worked hard for several years, with 
a band of chosen assistants, to design a new type of storage-battery, 
which should employ neither lead nor sulphuric acid. The ultimate 
outcome was the now well-known Edison storage-battery with nickel 
and iron elements, and an alkaline solution for electrolyte — the whole 
enclosed in nickeled steel containers. 

He turned his attention next to the cement industry, which he 
enriched with many improvements. In 19 13, his new diamond disk 
phonograph was put on the market. The work of perfecting this 
invention, which has been continued ever since, has required much 

[ 52] 



_^., THOMA S ALVA EDISON ^ 

patience and persistence because of the microscopic character of many 
disturbing elements. 

Since 1869, Mr. Edison has filed more than 1400 applications for 
patents, and more than 1 500 other inventions are embraced in caveats. 
He has secured also 1239 foreign patents. 

The outbreak of the present war in Europe shut off his supply of 
various chemicals, and forced him to install plants for their manufacture. 
He has also erected plants to help the textile, fur, rubber and other 
industries, and since the beginning of 1915, he has manufactured, for 
these industries or for himself, carbolic acid, myrbane oil, aniline oil, 
aniline salt, acetanilid, acetate of soda, paraphenylenediamine, para- 
amido-phenol, benzidine. He has also planned, installed and put in 
operation two plants for producing benzol, toluol, solvent naphtha, 
naphthalene, etc. 

In 191 5, Mr. Edison's eminence was recognized by his appointment 
as Chairman of the Board of Experts organized by the United States 
Government in connection with the improvement of the Navy. 



[ 53] 



CHARLES TALBOT PORTER 

M 



csa^ 



=D553 



CHARLES TALBOT PORTER 




HARLES TALBOT PORTER, a charter member 
of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 
and recipient of the John Fritz Medal for his "work 
in advancing the knowledge of steam engineering 
and for improvements in engine construction," died 
in New York, August 28, 19 10. Mr. Porter was 
born at Auburn, N. Y., January 18, 1826, and was 
descended from a notable line of New England ancestors including, on 
his father's side, the Rev. Jonathan Edwards, and on his mother's side, 
Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts and Governors Saltonstall 
and Winthrop of Connecticut. He was graduated from Hamilton 
College in 1845 and at the fiftieth reunion of the class presented the 
Half-century Annalist's Letter, a feature of the annual meetings of 
the Hamilton alumni. After graduation he read law in his father's 
ofifice in Auburn, and was admitted to the bar in 1847. 

After practising his profession for six or seven years, first at 
Rochester and afterwards in New York City, Mr. Porter became 
interested in mechanics in connection with a stone-dressing machine 
invented by one of his clients, which failed to operate satisfactorily. 
Believing that the fundamental principles of the machine were correct, 
Mr. Porter went to work to improve it, picking up by the way a 
Icnowledge of drafting and designing, and thus incidentally developing 
his latent mechanical ability. The stone-dressing machine was driven 
by a steam engine which he desired to run at high speed; but 
the governor was of the usual simple fly-ball type which could not 
be speeded up, and consequently the regulation of the engine was 
faulty. To remedy this defect, Mr. Porter was led to design and 
perfect the well-known central counterpoise type of governor which 
has since carried his name. 

Subsequently came the development of the high-speed Allen steam 
engine, later known as the Porter-Allen engine, which was essentially 
the life-work of Mr. Porter. The first engine was built in this 
country and shown at the London Exhibition of 1862, equipped with 
the Porter governor, and operating non-condensing. In 1867 at the 
French Exposition five engines were installed, the only high-speed 
engines exhibited. 

The exhibit at London and subsequent attempts to sell engines 
of this type in England showed the demand to be entirely for con- 
densing engines. This brought about the development by Mr. Porter 



[ 57 ] 



D-gc =— ' — ^ P>EP-^ ^ 5= ' ^:S ga3 

THE MEDALLISTS __^__ 

of a jet condenser to be direct-connected to his engines, with an air 
pump adapted to the high speed at which the engines ran. The 
building of these engines was begun in England in 1864. 

In his work in steam engineering Mr. Porter became associated or 
intimately acquainted with many of the early distinguished engineers, 
notably with John F. Allen and Charles B. Richards. Mr. Allen had 
originated a link and valve motion for steam engines, well adapted for 
use with the Porter counterpoise governor, and it was the combination 
by Mr. Porter of this mechanism with his governor, together with 
Mr. Porter's advanced ideas upon high rotative speeds and methods 
of engine construction, that resulted in the Porter- Allen engine. 

The study of steam economy showed the need of a steam engine 
indicator adapted to high speeds. This led to the design by Mr. 
Richards of the first indicator to meet these requirements. The 
patents were acquired by Mr. Porter and an instrument was shown in 
connection with the engine at the London Exhibition. It was shortly 
afterwards manufactured by Elliott Brothers of London. 

In the early manufacture of his engines, many practical difficulties 
had to be met, owing to the crudeness of machine shop methods. 
Numerous devices and systems of manufacture were introduced by 
Mr. Porter to attain the accuracy, without which successful high-speed 
machinery would be impossible. 

In 1868, Mr. Porter returned from England, formed a partnership 
with Mr. Allen and began the manufacture of engines in a small shop 
in Harlem, N. Y. During the three years of business depression, 
beginning with 1873, the manufacture of the engines was discontinued, 
but later was renewed at the Hewes & Phillips Iron Works, at 
Newark, N. J., under Mr. Porter's own name. They have since been 
manufactured by the Southwark Foundry and Machine Company at 
Philadelphia. 

In 1880, Mr. Porter installed a high-speed steam engine in the 
Edison laboratory at Menlo Park, N. J., which marked the beginning 
of direct-connected generators. Following this, the first of a series of 
engines for so-called steam dynamos, each independently driven by a 
direct-coupled engine, was constructed for the Edison Station at Pearl 
Street, New York. 

While these events are important in the history of the high-speed 
engine for electric generating, the introduction of Mr. Porter's engines 
into rolling-mill work was of even greater moment. The early pro- 
cesses were deliberate because men were habituated to slow movements. 
The first power came from the slow-turning water-wheel, later from the 
slow-speed steam engine. Faster movements were obtained through 
gears and belts; and then came the direct-connected, easily controlled 
high-speed engine. 

At the first annual meeting of the American Society of Mechanical 
Engineers in 1880, Mr. Porter read a brief paper upon "The Strength 

[ 58 1 



CHARLES TALBOT PORTER 

of Machine Tools," and he subsequently presented numerous others. 
At- the beginning of the manufacture of the Richards indicator, he 
prepared for the makers, Elliott Brothers of London, a brief treatise on 
the "Steam Engine Indicator," and in 1874 this was revised and very 
much enlarged by him and brought out simultaneously in London and 
New York. This contained the tables of the properties of saturated 
steam, based upon the experiments of M. Regnault, which so long 
remained a standard. Not long before his death he published his 
"Engineering Reminiscences," which are an interesting and valuable 
account of many incidents in the development of steam engineering. 
Mr. Porter was a member of the Board of Judges at the Centennial 
Exposition of 1876. 



[ 59 1 



ALFRED NOBLE 




C35IE 



=fl55i 



ALFRED NOBLE 




LFRED NOBLE was born August 7, 1844, at 
Livonia, Wayne County, Mich. That State had then 
been only seven years a member of the Union, but 
had already laid the foundation of a splendid material 
and intellectual progress. Colossal enterprises in 
lumbering, mining, railroading, manufacturing and 
inland navigation were mated with an excellent public 
school system, reinforced by numerous high schools and colleges and 
crowned by a great university. In such an environment the young 
farmer's son naturally dreamed of a university course and a pro- 
fessional career. But the fulfillment of the dream was postponed by 
reason of the war for the Union. In August, 1862, at the age of 
eighteen, Alfred Noble enlisted as a private in the 24th Michigan, 
and served with his regiment in the Army of the Potomac until he 
was mustered out, at the end of the war, with the rank of Sergeant. 
He then resumed the purpose of his youth. By working for more 
than a year as a clerk 'in the U. S. War Department, and studying 
hard when off duty, he secured the means and the necessary prepara- 
tion to enter Michigan University as a sophomore in 1867. In 1870 
he was graduated as a civil engineer, having paid his way by outside 
work as recorder on the U. S. Lake Survey, and as clerk, and after- 
wards assistant engineer, in river and harbor work on the east shore 
of Lake Michigan. After his graduation, he continued his connection 
with the work of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers on Lakes 
Michigan and Huron, and in 1870 was placed in local charge of the 
improvement of the Sault Ste. Marie. This position he retained for 
twelve years, during which period the great masonry lock at the 
Sault — at that time by far the largest canal lock in the world — was 
built. In 1882, after its completion, Mr. Noble resigned his position 
to become resident engineer for Mr. G. Bouscaron in the construction 
of the truss bridge over the Red River at Shreveport, La. 

Early in 1884, he was appointed general assistant engineer of the 
Northern Pacific Railroad, in charge of bridge construction on its line. 
During the three following years he superintended the building of 
highly important bridges, including the truss bridge, with draw, over 
the Snake River, near its junction with the Columbia; the bridge 
over Clark's Fork of the Columbia, the bridge over St. Louis Bay on 
Lake Superior, and the foundation and superstructure of the Marent 
Gulch viaduct, near Missoula, Montana. 



[ 63 ] 



THE MEDALLISTS 



In August, 1886, Mr. Noble removed to New York to become, and 
to remain until July, 1887, resident engineer for the erection of the 
Washington steel arch bridge over the Harlem River. He then took 
charge for Messrs. Morison & Corthell of the building of the Cairo 
bridge over the Ohio. This brought him into association with the 
late George S. Morison, whom he served as chief assistant engineer 
in the erection (i 888-1892) of the great cantilever bridge over the 
Mississippi at Memphis, and other bridges at Bellefontaine and Leaven- 
worth, over the Missouri, and at Alton, over the Mississippi. Mr. 
Morison's high opinion of his colleague and assistant is matter of record. 

In April, 1895, Mr. Noble was appointed by President Cleveland 
a member of the first Nicaraguan Canal Commission. In this capacity 
he visited Central America, and spent about three months in examining 
the lines of the proposed Panama and Nicaraguan Canals. 

After reporting, jointly with his colleagues, at the end of October, 
1895, he engaged himself in private practice as consulting engineer, 
until he was appointed in 1897, by the Secretary of War, to serve with 
Colonel Charles W. Raymond, Corps of Engineers, U. S. Army, and 
George T. Wisner, of Detroit, as a board of engineers to survey and 
prepare estimates for deep waterways from the Great Lakes to the 
sea-board. This board spent half a million dollars in its investigations ; 
fixed twenty-one feet as the most economical depth, proved the most 
practicable route to be via Lake Ontario and the Oswego and Mohawk 
Rivers, examined by borings, etc., every part of that route, and 
determined the nature and cost of the work (in every particular except 
the price to be paid for private property taken) so accurately that a 
contractor might safely have based his bid for any section upon 
its report. 

In 1 899, Mr. Noble was appointed by President McKinley a member 
of the Isthmian Canal Commission, and when this subject subsequently 
came before Congress, a private letter from him, clearly and tersely 
stating the argument in favor of a lock canal, was read in the House 
of Representatives, and is said to have influenced decisively the action of 
both Houses. 

Among other engineering enterprises with which Mr. Noble was 
connected at this period, may be named the great sea wall, built to 
protect the city of Galveston, Texas, against a recurrence of the 
disastrous flood of 1900, and the bridge across the Mississippi at 
Thebes, Illinois, which was erected by him in partnership with Mr. Ralph 
Modjeski. Moreover, he was employed as consulting engineer in 
connection with the difficult problems presented by the foundations 
and structures of some of the lofty office buildings of New York City. 

Almost the latest of Mr. Noble's labors was, perhaps, the most 
important. He was appointed in 1902 a member of the board of 
engineers which directed the operations of the Pennsylvania Railroad 
Company (through auxiliary corporations in New York and New 

[ 64 ] 



ALFRED NOBLE 



Jersey) in tunneling under the North and East Rivers and the borough 
of Manhattan, building the great Pennsylvania terminal in New York, 
and yards and shops in New Jersey and Long Island, etc. Besides 
serving on the board, Mr. Noble was, as chief engineer of the East 
River division of the Pennsylvania, New York and Long Island Railroad, 
directly in charge of the construction of the tunnels from the terminal 
in Seventh Avenue under Manhattan and the East River, to the 
portals on Long Island, the approaches from the east and the immense 
terminal yard at Long Island City. This part of the great undertaking 
is reported to have cost more than $30,000,000. 

In 1895, the University of Michigan conferred upon Mr. Noble the 
honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, and the University of Wisconsin 
did the same in 1904. In 1898, he became President of the Western 
Society of Engineers, and, in 1903, President of the American Society 
of Civil Engineers. He was also a member of the Institution of Civil 
Engineers of Great Britain. 

In 19 10, the John Fritz Gold Medal was awarded to him " for notable 
achievements as a civil engineer." 

He died April 19, 19 14. 



[ 6s ] 



SIR WILLIAM HENRY WHITE 




CS3B 



3E:^ 



SIR WILLIAM HENRY WHITE 




ILLIAM HENRY WHITE was born February 2, 
1845, at Devonport, England. In March, 1859, at the 
age of fourteen, he was apprenticed at the Royal Naval 
Dockyard. He also attended the Dockyard School 
maintained by the Admiralty, where he showed his 
ability by winning an Admiralty Scholarship in 1863. 
In 1864, the Admiralty established at South 
Kensington, the Royal School of Naval Architecture which was 
afterwards merged into the Royal Naval College at Greenwich. 
Sir William was one of the first students received at this newly founded 
college, taking first place at his entrance examinations in 1 864, which 
standing he maintained during his three years of attendance. He was 
graduated in 1867, with the highest honors, as a Fellow (first class). 

In 1870, he was made Professor of Naval Architecture at this 
school, a position which he held until 1881. This work was in addition 
to his duties at the Admiralty. Among his pupils during this period 
were men who afterward became chief constructors and naval architects 
in the various navies of the world. 

Immediately after his graduation from the Royal School of Naval 
Architecture, Sir William entered the Admiralty as Private Secretary 
to Sir Edward Reed, Chief Constructor, and was much engaged in 
the solution of scientific problems in naval architecture, etc. 

In 1870, on the resignation of Sir Edward Reed and the appoint- 
ment of a commission to continue his work. Sir William was made 
Professional Secretary to the Commission. In this position, and with 
the aid of his life-long friend, the late Mr. William John, he carried 
out numerous experiments on the stability of ships for the Com- 
mission appointed to investigate the capsizing of the ironclad Captain, 
in the Bay of Biscay. The results were embodied in a paper before 
the Institution of Naval Architects, which greatly advanced the science 
of ship design. 

In 1875, Sir William was promoted to the rank of Assistant 
Constructor, and, in 1881, to that of Chief Constructor. As such 
he effected the organization of all the trained architects in the 
Admiralty into one corps — the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors — 
which has proved of great service to the British Navy. In 1883, 
he was engaged by Sir William Armstrong to organize and direct 
the warship-building department of the great shipyard at Elswick, 
England. In this position he designed naval vessels for Austria, Italy, 



[ 69 1 



THE MEDALLISTS 



Japan, China and Spain and had charge of the construction of several 
for the British Navy. 

In 1885, returning to the Admiralty, Sir WiUiam was appointed 
Director of Naval Construction and Assistant Controller of the Navy. 
This position he held until February, 1902, when he resigned on 
account of ill-health. 

Sir William commenced his work as Director of Naval Construction 
at the Admiralty at the beginning of a period of expansion in British 
naval affairs. On the passage of the Naval Defence Act of 1889, 
providing for the construction of 70 ships at a cost of ;^22,ooo,ooo 
sterling, he had a chance to carry out his idea of homogeneity in 
a fleet, namely, ships bearing a distinct relation to each other and to 
the fleet as a whole. The Spencer programme of 1894 and the 
Goschen programme of 1 896, the latter comprising the construction 
of the first dreadnought of the British Navy, were also carried out 
under his supervision. The development of the torpedo boat and the 
torpedo-boat destroyer was due to his skill, and he designed also the 
river gun-boats built for the Nile Expedition under Lord Kitchener. 
When he retired in 1902, he had had responsible charge of the design 
and construction of 245 vessels, valued at about ;^ 100,000,000 
sterling. All this vast work was done under constantly changing 
conditions of material, type, size, speed, armament, etc., and to him 
may be attributed the introduction of several innovations in British 
warships, notably that of water-tube boilers and the use of oil fuel 
for firing boilers. 

He was made C. B. in 1891 and K. C. B. in 1895, and on his 
retirement from the Admiralty in 1902, Parliament voted him a special 
grant for "exceptional services to the Navy." 

He subsequently began practice as a Consulting Naval Architect, 
and was engaged on many important works. He was a member of 
the Cunard Commission which decided the type of machinery for the 
Lusitania and the Mauretania ; a Director of the firm of Swan, 
Hunter & Wigham Richardson, Limited, the builders of the Mauretania, 
during her construction ; a Director of the Parsons Marine Turbine 
Company; and a Director of the Grand Trunk Railway Company after 
that company became the owner of steamships. He designed steamers 
with geared turbines for service between India and Ceylon, and was a 
member of the Government Commission to investigate the question 
of load lines of merchant ships. 

On February 27, 191 3, Sir William suffered a paralytic stroke at 
his offices in Westminster, and died the same day at Westminster 
Hospital, to which he had been removed. 

Sir William was a frequent contributor to technical and engineering 
journals and to the publications of technical and scientific societies. 
He was also the author of several books: his "Manual of Naval 
Architecture" and "Treatise on Shipbuilding" have become classics, 

[ 70 ] 



SIR WILLIAM HENRY WHITE 

-♦• — , ^.,-^— 

the former having been translated into German, Italian, Russian and 
Spanish. His most notable contributions were made to the Transactions 
of the Institution of Naval Architects, the best known being the 
papers on the stability of ships (already referred to), the rolling of 
sailing ships, and the effect of bilge keels on rolling, and his description 
of the design of the battleship Royal Sovereign. 

He was Chairman of the Committee on Education and Training of 
Engineers, appointed by the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1903, 
and also a member of the Governing Body of the Imperial College of 
Science and Technology. 

Sir William was a Fellow of the Royal Society ; Honorary Vice- 
President of the Institution of Naval Architects; Past-President of 
the Institutions of Civil Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, Marine Engi- 
neers, Junior Engineers and the Institute of Metals; President- Elect of 
the British Association for the Advancement of Science, having been 
President of the Mechanical Science Section. He was also an Honorary 
Member of many other British and foreign technical societies, including 
the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Society 
of Civil Engineers and the Society of Naval Architects and Marine 
Engineers. 

In 191 1, he received the John Fritz Medal "for notable achievement 
in naval architecture." He had also received honorary degrees from 
many colleges and universities, among which were : LL. D. from 
Glasgow; D. Sc. from Cambridge, Durham and Columbia (New York 
City) Universities; and D. Eng. from Sheffield. He also belonged to 
the Athenaeum and British Empire Clubs. 



[ 71 ] 



ROBERT W. HUNT 




C5a£ 



3523 



ROBERT W. HUNT 




iOBERT WOOLSTON HUNT was born December 
9, 1838, in Fallsington, Bucks County, Pennsyl- 
vania. His father, Dr. Robert A. Hunt, died in 
March, 1855, at Covington, Kentucky. In 1857, 
he moved with his mother to Pottsville, Pennsylvania, 
where, in the iron rolling-mill of John Burnish & Co., 
he spent several years acquiring a practical knowledge 
of puddling, heating, rolling and other details of the iron rail business. 
In 1859, he took a course of analytical inorganic chemistry in the 
laboratory of Booth, Garrett & Reese in Philadelphia. In i860, he 
was employed as chemist by Wood, Morrell & Co., then lessees of 
the Cambria Iron Works at Johnstown, Pa., and established at these 
works the first analytical laboratory maintained in America by an iron 
and steel company, as a part of its organization. 

In the spring of 1861, as night-foreman of the Elmira rolling-mill, 
Elmira, N. Y., he assisted in the organization of the working force and 
the starting of that industry. In the fall of that year, he entered the 
United States army military service and was stationed at Harrisburg, 
Pa., where a year later he was put in command, with the rank of Captain, 
of Camp Curtin at Harrisburg, rendezvous for Pennsylvania volunteers. 
In 1863, with the same rank, he served as mustering officer for the 
State of Pennsylvania, and in 1864, he, together with his friend, 
Oberlin N. Ramsey, assisted in recruiting Lambert's Independent 
Mounted Company of Pennsylvania Volunteers. 

After the war, he returned to the employ of the Cambria Iron 
Company, and on May i, 1865, was sent to Wyandotte, Mich., 
where the Kelly Pneumatic Process Company, in which the Cambria 
was interested, had erected a plant. This company controlled the 
William Kelly American patents and Mushet's American patent for 
recarburization, and was an opponent of Winslow, Griswold & Holley, 
who had purchased Bessemer's American patents, and under Alexander 
L. Holley's direction had built an experimental plant at Troy, N. Y. 
The rival enterprises were wisely consolidated in 1866. In his 
"History of the Bessemer Manufacture in the United States" {Trans. 
A. I. M. E., Vol. 5.), Mr. Hunt has narrated in detail the interesting and 
complicated events of the period of their conflict. It appears that the 
Kelly plant produced in 1864 from pig iron remelted in a reverberatory, 
the first pneumatic steel made in America, and that the use of a 
cupola for remelting was introduced by Mr. Hunt in 1865. In 1866, 



[ 75 ] 



THE MEDALLISTS 

-.(>—, ■ ■ ■ "-H — 

he returned to Johnstown, Pa., where he had charge of the hammering 
and roUing of steel. He superintended the rolHng of the first steel rails 
produced on a commercial order in America, a lot rolled by Cambria 
for the Pennsylvania Railroad from ingots made by the Pennsylvania 
Steel Company. The behavior of these ingots led to the successful 
introduction of blooming by rolling instead of hammering. 

The Cambria Company finished in 1871 a Bessemer plant, present- 
ing many new features in construction and practice. One of the latter 
was the running of the cupola continuously, like a blast-furnace, a 
revolutionary improvement, which played an important part in the 
great increase of product. Another was a new system of bottom- 
casting. In these and other improvements, Mr. Hunt was associated 
with his intimate friend, A. L. Holley, Consulting Engineer, and 
George Fritz, Chief Engineer, of the Cambria Company. 

Mr. Hunt left the Cambria Company in 1873, to become Superin- 
tendent of the Bessemer plant at Troy, N. Y., later known as the 
Albany and Rensselaer Steel and Iron Company, and in 1886 as 
the Troy Iron and Steel Company. Through all these changes, 
Mr. Hunt remained the General Superintendent, the works being 
enlarged and remodeled, and producing in rolling-mills of various sizes 
a great variety of steel and iron articles, "from a steel rail to a shingle 
nail." Under Mr. Hunt's supervision, the Troy Iron and Steel 
Company erected three 16 x 80 feet blast-furnaces on Breaker Island, 
opposite its Bessemer plant, and conveyed the molten metal on a ferry- 
boat across the Hudson river to the converters. 

Mr. Hunt made at Troy many grades of Bessemer steel not pre- 
viously produced in America, notably soft steel for drop forgings. 
He was also a pioneer in the production of steel for gun-barrels, 
carriage-axles, drills and springs. Several processes for the manu- 
facture of special steels were patented by him and Dr. August 
Wendell, chemist of the works, and the driven tables on both sides of 
the rolls, afterwards used by nearly all the rail-mills of the country, 
were first developed by him and Max M. Suppes, his master mechanic, 
at Troy. Another notable improvement patented by Mr. Hunt was 
the rolling of wire-rod blooms into billets, which were then rolled to 
120- 150 feet length, and cut into 30 feet pieces. 

In 1883, Mr. Hunt was elected President of the American Institute 
of Mining Engineers, and in 1891 President of the American Society 
of Mechanical Engineers. In 1906, he was again elected President of 
the American Institute of Mining Engineers; in 1893, President of the 
Western Society of Engineers; in 191 2, President of the American 
Society for Testing Materials; and in 19 14, American Vice-President of 
the International Association for Testing Materials. At different times 
he has served in other positions on the Boards of all five Societies. He 
is also a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Insti- 
tution of Civil Engineers, and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. 

[ 76 ] 



ROBERT W. HUNT 

_^_.. _-♦_ 

Mr. Hunt was Secretary of the Committee on Standard Rail Sec- 
tions appointed by the American Society of Civil Engineers, the final 
report of which was made in 1893, and of the Special Committee on 
Rail Sections, appointed in 1892, which reported finally in 19 10. The 
sections recommended by this committee were generally adopted by 
the railways of America. 

In 1888, Mr. Hunt resigned his position at Troy, and established 
in Chicago the firm of Robert W. Hunt & Company, which now has 
offices and laboratories in the principal cities of the United States, and 
in London, England, Canada, and Mexico City. In 19 12, the John 
Fritz Medal was awarded to Mr. Hunt "for his contributions to the 
early development of the Bessemer Process." He has been for many 
years a Trustee of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which con- 
ferred upon him (June 4, 19 16) the honorary degree of Doctor of 
Engineering. He has been a frequent contributor to the proceedings 
of technical societies, and has often lectured before educational and 
scientific bodies. While residing in Troy, he was elected for four 
successive terms Commander of John A. Griswold Post, No. 338, 
Grand Army of the Republic. 



[ 77 ] 



JOHN EDSON SWEET 




csae 



35S5 



JOHN EDSON SWEET 




OHN EDSON SWEET was born at Pompey, near 
Syracuse, N. Y., October 21, 1832. His father, 
Horace, was a farmer, and his mother was a member 
of the well-known Avery family, distinguished for 
mechanics and inventors. He was educated at 
district schools, and in 1850 was apprenticed to John 
Pinkerton in the carpentry and joinery trade. At 
the end of his apprenticeship, he obtained a position in the architect's 
office of Elijah T. Hayden, of Syracuse, in the belief that to become 
a successful carpenter one must first learn the principles of drafting. 
After that, and until 1861, he was engaged in carpentry and the 
making of construction drawings for buildings. In that time and 
place there was small opportunity for the display of architectural 
talent. Nevertheless one of his first pieces of work was a design for 
a barn which won the first prize in a competition established by the 
farm paper, the Rural New Yorker. It was in 1850 probably one of 
the best of its type of "buildings ever worked out. It was prophetic 
of the architect's work in succeeding years that the prize design was 
unique and individualistic and adapted to the requirements of the 
"great majority" of users. 

When the Civil War broke out, young Sweet was supervising the 
erection of a hotel at Selma, Ala., which he had designed and which 
was planned to be one of the best in the South. Being a Yankee, 
he decided to leave that region. Incidentally, this change of location 
marked a change in his activities, which were thereafter almost entirely 
in the direction of mechanical construction, engineering, and teaching. 
After a year as draughtsman and pattern maker in machine and 
railroad shops, he spent two years as inventor and draughtsman at the 
London Works, Birmingham, England, returning in 1864 to be en- 
gaged until 1867 as designer of machinery at the Onondaga Steel 
Works, Syracuse, N. Y. Then came another year abroad, and then 
three years again at Syracuse (i 868-1 871) as Superintendent of the 
Syracuse Mower and Reaper Works. From 1871 to 1873, he was 
Superintendent of Bridge Building. 

In 1873, he became Professor of Practical Mechanics in the Sibley 
College of Mechanic Arts at Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y. This 
position he held for only six years and a half ; but during that period he 
produced upon his many students a deep impression as a teacher, and 
won in the engineering profession a high reputation as an inventor 

[81 ] 



THE MEDALLISTS 



and a pioneer reformer in the designing of machinery. His fame is 
specially connected with the development and introduction of the 
straight-line high-speed steam engine, involving the formation in 1880 
of the Straight-Line Engine Company, of which he became and 
remained for 35 years the President and Superintendent. 

Professor Sweet was one of the early members of the American 
Institute of Mining Engineers, and one of the founders of the 
American Society of Mechanical Engineers, of which he was President 
in 1883 and 1884. In 1893, he was expert for the U. S. Government 
and Member of the Jury on Machine Tools at the Chicago Exposition. 
In 1899, he was elected the first President of the Engine Builders' 
Association of the United States; in 1904, President of the Tech- 
nology Club of Syracuse, N. Y. ; and in 1906, President of the 
Syracuse Metal Trades Association. In this year he published a 
suggestive book, entitled "Things That Are Usually Wrong." He 
had been since 1858a frequent contributor to technical and scientific 
journals and to the Transactions of the professional societies to which 
he belonged. 

In 19 14, the John Fritz Gold Medal was awarded to Professor 
Sweet "for his achievements in machine design, and for his pioneer 
work in applying sound engineering principles to the construction and 
development of the high-speed steam engine." 

He died at his home in Syracuse, May 8th, 191 6, in the 84th year 
of his age, leaving behind him the record of an exceptionally long, 
distinguished and useful life. 



[82 ] 



JAMES DOUGLAS 



W 



CSaE 



35=2 



JAMES DOUGLAS 




AMES DOUGLAS, LL. D., was born at Quebec in 
November, 1837, the son of a distinguished physician 
and surgeon. He studied at the University of Edin- 
burgh and graduated at Queens University, Kingston, 
Ontario, afterwards travehng extensively in Europe 
and the Orient. He took post-graduate work at 
Edinburgh in medicine and surgery, and must have 
studied theology, for he was afterwards licensed to preach. It was 
his first intention to follow the practice of medicine or to enter the 
church, but he early began to occupy his leisure time in the pursuit 
of literature. Having a fondness for the natural sciences, he studied 
chemistry and taught this branch of science for three years in Morrin 
College, Quebec. His father had extensive but unremunerative invest- 
ments in gold and copper mining in Canada, and the condition of 
these investments made it imperative that someone should look after 
them more closely than had been done. Young James Douglas there- 
upon entered the mining field. He had met the late Dr. T. Sterry 
Hunt and together they worked out the details of the well-known 
Hunt & Douglas process for the wet extraction of copper. 

Dr. Douglas came to the United States in 1875 to introduce the 
Hunt & Douglas process in the works of the Chemical Copper 
Company, at Phoenixville, Pa. He traveled extensively, visiting 
mining centers. His power of keen observation and his willingness 
always to give advice wherever needed, bore fruit in many instances 
to the benefit of his friends, if not in all cases for his own financial 
advancement. He is credited with having revolutionized the practice 
of the Arkansas Valley Smelting Company at Leadville, changing 
their annual deficit into an average profit — this from a casual remark 
which he made to the superintendent. A mining man, in Butte, 
Mont., in the early days, testifies that in his opinion Dr. Douglas was the 
first to suggest the probability of secondary enrichment in that camp. 
The greater part of Dr. Douglas' active life has been associated 
with the development of the metallurgy of copper, and that chiefly in 
connection with the Clifton and Bisbee deposits in Arizona. He had 
first refined copper from this district in his works at Phoenixville, 
and subsequently took charge of the development of the Copper Queen 
mine in Arizona which the firm of Phelps, Dodge & Company had under 
option. After its purchase, by his advice. Dr. Douglas was put in charge 
permanently. When Phelps, Dodge & Company was incorporated, 

[ 85 ] 



THE MEDALLISTS 

■»■ ■ — • — • — «~ 

Dr. Douglas became its first President. His foresight and busi- 
ness imagination led this very successful firm into railroad building, 
coal mining and to the extension of their interests into Mexican and 
other fields. Many young mining engineers and, indeed, those older in 
the profession, bear testimony to his broadmindedness and liberality. 
His mines and works were open at all times to any who had a legitmate 
reason for visiting them. His lectures before mining institutes, 
colleges and learned societies have been preserved as records of great 
permanent value. His charities have been large — in the form of 
endowment of colleges and research institutions, etc. He has been 
honored by having the degree of LL. D. conferred on him by both 
Queens and McGill Universities, has been twice elected to the 
Presidency of the American Institute of Mining Engineers and, in 
addition to receiving the John Fritz Medal, has also been the recipient 
of the Gold Medal of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy. 

In 19 1 6, Dr. Douglas endowed with the sum of ^100,000 the 
Library of the United Engineering Society of New York. 

Available space does not permit the listing of Dr. Douglas' many 
scientific and other writings. A fairly complete list appeared in the 
Bulletin of the American Institute of Mining Engineers for January, 
191 6. It is interesting to note that this list covers not only the 
particular fields of copper mining and metallury, but also touches 
upon the science of astronomy, the improvements in the manufacture 
of steel, discussions on the relation of railroads to the mineral industry, 
and includes among the more important publications, volumes on 
Canada, on the relations between New England and New France, and 
a most interesting volume containing the journals and reminiscences 
of his father, edited by the son. 

A list of his writings would be too long for the purposes of this 
article, but among them may be mentioned : 

The Copper Deposits of Harvey Hill, 1870. 

Spectroscopic Observations of the Sun, 1870. 

The Copper Mines of Chili, 1872, 

Copper Mines of Lake Superior, 1874. 

Metallurgy of Copper, 1883. 

Cupola Smelting of Copper, 1885. 

American Methods and Appliances in the Metallurgy of Copper, Lead, 
Gold and Silver, 1895. 

Progress of Metallurgy and Metal Mining in America during the last 
Half Century, 1897. 

Record of Boring in the Sulphur Spring Valley of Arizona, 1898. 

Treatment of Copper Mattes in the Bessemer Converter, 1899. 

The Characteristics and Conditions of Technical Progress of the 19th 
Century, 1899. 

[86] 



JAMES DOUGLAS 

— ^►— •■ ' ■ . '•• M 

Gas for use in the Manufacture of Steel, 1902. 

Untechnical Addresses on Technical Subjects, 1908. 

The Influence of Railroads of the United States and Canada on the 
Mineral Industry, 1909. 

Earthquakes in Mines, 1911. 

Development of the Railroads of North America and their Control by 
the State, 191 1. 

The Copper Bearing Traps of the Coppermine River, 1913. 

Most of the above essays and many others appeared first in the 
Transactions of various technical and other societies, but in addition to 
these, Dr. Douglas has given us several historical volumes, among them: 

Canadian Independence, Annexation and Imperial Federation. 

Old France in the New World. 

JVew Fnglafid and Hew France. 

Journal and Reminiscences of James Douglas, M. D., by his son. 



[ 87 ] 



ELIHU THOMSON 



t^ 



csaE 



^s=s 



ELIHU THOMSON 




LIHU THOMSON was born in 1853 at Man- 
chester, England. His father was Scotch and his 
mother English, and they came to the United States 
in 1858, settling in Philadelphia. He was educated in 
the public schools of that city and graduated from 
the Central High School early in 1870. He entered 
a laboratory as analyst, but was appointed Assistant 
Professor of Chemistry in the High School l^ter in the same year. 
In 1876, when twenty-three years old, he was given the chair of 
chemistry in the same school. This position was retained until 1880, 
when having become deeply interested in the future applications of 
electricity, he resigned to take up the work which he has continued 
ever since. He had always been fascinated by physical and chemical 
studies, and especially by electricity. He had constructed when 
eleven years old a frictional electrical machine from the traditional 
wine bottle. This and similar apparatus were followed by batteries, 
electromagnets, and telegraph instruments in which the bare wire was 
insulated by the laborious winding of thread around it by hand. 

Possessed of a natural aptitude for construction and the use of 
tools, he gave the time he could spare from other duties to making 
such apparatus as he needed. In this way, while in his teens, he 
had built induction coils, electromagnets, cameras, chemical balances, 
and the like. In his early twenties, he constructed lenses, such as 
achromatic microscope objectives and oculars, and the microscope stand 
itself, and also built a pipe organ with electrical action, making pipes, 
windchest, bellows, keyboard and all other parts. This work, coupled 
possibly with a hereditary aptitude, gave him insight and skill, and 
naturally led to invention. He acquired from it also a facility in 
laying out work for the factory and following it through to completion. 
In recent years his taste for construction has found an outlet in the 
preparation of lenses for refracting telescopes, a lo-inch glass being 
mounted in his private observatory at his home in Swampscott, Mass. 
By way of contrast to his larger work demanding great care and skill, 
he has made photographic lens combinations, and even oil-immersion, 
wide-angle, high-power microscope objectives. 

When he left his professorship in 1880, it was to take charge of 
the commercial development of the Thomson-Houston arc-lighting 
system based on his patents, some of which were taken jointly with 
his former colleague at the High School, Prof. E. J. Houston. The 



[ 91 ] 



THE MEDALLISTS ^_ 

business was begun at Philadelphia in 1879, ^^^ was removed in 1880 
to New Britain, Conn. Mr. E. W. Rice, Jr., now the President of 
the General Electric Company, accompanied him as assistant. In 
1883, the modest works at New Britain were removed to Lynn, Mass., 
a Lynn syndicate having bought control. Here it was that the great 
development of the Thomson-Houston Electric Company began, due 
in large measure to the enterprise of its managing heads, chiefly Mr. 
C. A. Coffin, afterwards for many years President of the General 
Electric Company, and to the success of its engineering undertakings 
and achievements. During these pioneer years. Prof. Thomson was 
electrician and chief engineer, and many of the fundamentally important 
inventions upon which the business was based were due to him. 

In 1892, the Thomson-Houston Electric Company and the Edison 
General Electric Company were merged under the title of the General 
Electric Company, which now possesses extensive works at Schenec- 
tady, N. Y. ; at Lynn and Pittsfield, Mass.; at Harrison, N. J.; Fort 
Wayne, Ind.; Erie, Pa.; Cleveland, O.; and offshoots in France, 
England, Germany, and other countries. In connection with the 
newer problems arising in this great industry Prof. Thomson is still 
actively engaged. As a record of his inventive work there are about 
600 patents in the United States alone, many of the inventions 
being of such importance that they have gone into extensive use in 
lighting, railways, power transmission, etc. The Thomson electric 
meter, as an example, which received first prize in a meter competition 
in Paris in 1890, is now numbered by millions in use. His pioneer 
discoveries and inventions in alternating currents are well known. 
It is not so well known that he is the inventor of the electric air-drill, 
as used today. 

He was pioneer also in high-frequency work, upon which in later 
years wireless methods have been based. He was the originator of 
the art of electric welding by the resistance method, a process which 
is being more and more extensively applied to metal manufactures, 
and which in fact is essential to many of them. 

As a writer and lecturer on scientific and technical subjects Prof. 
Thomson has attained an exceptional standing for clearness of state- 
ment. This together with his intimate knowledge of the electrical 
art, gives him unusual power as an expert witness in contested cases. 
His ripe experience is readily available to the younger men with whom 
he is associated. His attitude to people generally in need of infor- 
mation which he can give is that of the teacher, a generous giving 
out of the information he may possess, based on the desire that others 
may receive and carry further that which he has acquired. 

Elihu Thomson, as was natural, has been the recipient of many 
honors. In 1889, he was decorated by the French Government for 
electrical inventions, being made Chevalier and Officer of the Legion 
of Honor. He has received the honorary degrees of A.M. from 

[92 ] 



_^ ELIHU THOMSON ^ 

Yale and later D.Sc. from Harvard. Tufts College early gave him 
the degree of Ph.D. He has received the Rumford Medal, and was 
awarded the Grand Prix at the Paris Exposition of 1889 and of 1900. 
He is Past-President of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, 
Member of the Institute of Civil Engineers (London), Fellow of the 
American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston), Member of American 
Philosophical Society, of the American Physical Society, Chemical 
Society and the National Academy of Sciences, and of many other 
societies here and abroad. He was official U. S. delegate to the 
Chamber of Delegates, Electrical Congress in Chicago in 1893. He 
was chosen President of the International Electrical Congress at St. 
Louis in 1904 and also President of the International Chamber of 
Official Delegates at said Congress. Also in 1904 he was elected 
Honorary Member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers of Great 
Britain and in 1909 was chosen President of the International 
Electrotechnical Commission, the general meeting being held at Turin, 
Italy, in 191 1. 

Elihu Thomson was the first recipient of the Edison Medal and 
more recently received the award of the Elliott Cresson Gold Medal 
from the Franklin Institute at Philadelphia, having before that twice 
received the John Scott Legacy Medal for electrical inventions. 

It may be added that, having been always interested in education, 
he is now, and has been for many years, connected with the governing 
Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 



[93] 



HENRY M. HOWE 




csae 



ES:3 



HENRY M. HOWE 




ENRY MARION HOWE was born March 2, 1848, 
at Boston, Mass. His father was Dr. Samuel 
G. Howe, famous for his service to Greece in her 
war for independence (1824 to 1830), and later for his 
labors in the instruction of the blind and the feeble- 
minded. His mother was Julia Ward Howe, author 
of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," and leader 
in many reforms. He was graduated from the Boston Latin School 
in 1865, and from Harvard College with the degree of A. B. four years 
later. He then entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 
from which he received in 1871 the degree of B. S.; and Harvard 
made him an A. M. in 1872. He was subsequently engaged at 
Pittsburgh, Pa., and Troy, N. Y., as an assistant in metallurgical work, 
and soon became known as a keen observer and investigator. In 
1880 and the following years, he designed and built the works of the 
Oxford Nickel and Copper Company, at Capelton and Eustis, in the 
province of Quebec, Canada, and at Bergen Point, N. J. From 1883 
to 1897, he resided at Boston, and besides his private practice as a 
consulting metallurgist and expert witness in metallurgical patent 
suits, was lecturer on metallurgy at the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology. 

Having become a member of the American Institute of Mining 
Engineers in 1871, the year of its foundation, Mr. Howe soon 
distinguished himself by his contributions to the Transactions of that 
society. His first paper, in Vol. 3, on "Blast-furnace Economy," 
was followed in subsequent volumes by " Thoughts on the Thermic 
Cur\^es of Blast Furnaces," and "The Nomenclature of Iron" — the 
latter a brilliant contribution to the discussion inaugurated by Alexander 
L. Holley, with the famous paper, "What is Steel.?" Later, he 
published valuable essays on the metallurgy of nickel and copper. 

In 1885, Professor Howe issued his first book, "Copper Smelting," 
and in 1891, the first edition of the great work, "The Metallurgy of 
Steel," which was to constitute the principal foundation of his fame. 
In this volume he embodied the results of a comprehensive study 
of the literature of his subject, together with intelligent and fruitful 
researches of his own. A supplementary work, entitled "Iron, Steel and 
Other Alloys," issued in 1903, emphasized what his "Metallurgical 
Laboratory Notes " of 1902 had already indicated — his leadership in 
the comparatively recent science of metallography, especially that of 
iron and steel, to which he furnished many fundamental data and 
several felicitous new terms and hypotheses. 



[ 97 ] 



THE MEDALLISTS 



Of these three books, " The Metallurgy of Steel " and " Metallurgical 
Laboratory Notes " (the latter said to be the first text-book for the 
metallurgical laboratory ever written) were translated into French, and 
" Iron, Steel and Other Alloys " has appeared in Russian. The 
versatility and thoroughness of Professor Howe's learning and 
knowledge, the acuteness of his observation and the clearness of his 
statements and arguments are evinced in more than three hundred 
professional papers read before scientific and technical societies, etc. 

The universal recognition of the high quality and value of his work 
is shown by the numerous honors conferred upon him in America and 
many other countries. He was a member of the Jury on Mining 
and Metallurgical Processes at the Paris Expositions of 1888 and 
1900, and President of the Jury of Awards on Mines and Mining at 
the Chicago Exposition of 1893. In that year he was also President 
of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, which had charge 
of two departments (Mining and Metallurgy) of the International 
Engineering Congress, held at Chicago. These sessions were made 
memorable by the presentation and discussion of Posepny's " Treatise 
on Ore Deposits " (then published for the first time in any language) 
and the epoch-making contributions of Hadfield, Osmond, Martins, 
Sauveur, Howe and others on steel and its alloys ; their nature, micro- 
structure, heat treatment, etc. 

In 1895, Professor Howe received the Bessemer Gold Medal of the 
British Iron and Steel Institute, the Gold Medal of the German Verein 
zur Befordertmg des Gewerbfleisses (Society for the Promotion of 
Technical Industry) and the Elliot Cresson Gold Medal of the Franklin 
Institute of Philadelphia. In 1906, he was made Chevalier of the 
Legion d'Honneur of France, and in the same year Knight Commander 
of the Imperial Russian Order of St. Stanislaus. He has been twice 
President of the American Society for Testing Materials, has been 
President and is a life member of the Council of the International 
Association for Testing Materials, has served three times as President 
of the Alumni Association of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 
and is an Honorary Member of the Russian Imperial Technical Society, 
the Russian Metallurgical Society, the French Soci^U d' Encourage- 
ment pour r Industrie Nationahy which awarded him also a prize of 
2500 francs, the British Institution of Mining and Metallurgy, the 
Cleveland (England) Institution of Engineers, the Royal Swedish 
Academy of Science and the Dallas Historical Society. He is a non- 
resident Fellow of the American Philosophical Society and of the 
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

It would be unfair to close this list of Professor Howe's scientific 
achievements and honors without mention of the great practical service 
rendered by him to American industry by introducing into this country 
in 1890 the manufacture of manganese steel and of the Hadfield pro- 
jectiles made of it. He is still Vice-President of the Taylor-Wharton 
Iron and Steel Company, which is engaged in that manufacture. 

[ 98 ] 



JONAS WALDO SMITH 




isaE 



3BSS 



JONAS WALDO SMITH 




lONAS WALDO SMITH was born on March 9, 
1 861, at Lincoln, Mass., a small town near Boston. 
i His parents, of English extraction, lived on a farm. 
Here young Waldo Smith spent his boyhood and 
attended the public schools. At 19, he went to 
Phillips Academy, Andover, from which he was 
graduated from the scientific course in 1881. Soon 
afterward Mr. Smith went to Lawrence, Mass., to become an assistant 
in the Engineering Department of the Essex Company, which controls 
the local water development there. His service in this environment led 
him to decide to pursue a thorough course of study in civil engineering. 
This he did at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he 
was graduated in 1887. 

During his college vacations and for some three years after his 
graduation, he served with the Holyoke (Mass.) Water Power Com- 
pany, where he had much experience in the testing of turbines, at 
times assisting in making noteworthy hydraulic experiments. 

In 1890, he became resident engineer with the East Jersey Water 
Company, which had just entered into a contract to build new supply 
works for the City of Newark, in charge of extensive reservoir con- 
struction for two years or more. As principal assistant engineer he had 
charge later of pipe line extensions, operation and maintenance. 

In 1897, Mr. Smith was made Engineer and Superintendent of the 
Passaic Water Company and affiliated companies which distributed water 
to numerous communities of north Jersey, including Paterson, Passaic and 
Montclair, and a few years later was made Chief Engineer of the East 
Jersey Water Company. His experience during this period as an 
administrator proved invaluable in later years. He came in contact 
with the various consumers of this large waterworks system, and was 
intimately associated with the adjustment of public relations between 
the Water Company and some of the municipalities. Under his ad- 
ministration the use of meters was advanced, and the Little Falls Filter 
Plant, practically the first of its type in this country, was installed. 

In this work Mr. Smith came actively in contact with a group of 
men notable for their far-sighted policy and business alertness, and 
during the later portion of his connection with them he served as 
Consulting Engineer on the design and construction of the Boonton 
Reservoir and of the long pipe line supplying water by gravity to 
Jersey City. 



[ loi ] 



gggp - - ■ 1 ==ff> at 

THE MEDALLISTS 



In 1903, Mr. Smith was made Chief Engineer for the Croton 
Aqueduct Commission which still had in hand the completion of two 
large storage reservoirs and numerous highways, bridges and other 
structures connected with the new Croton Reservoir and the Jerome 
Park Reservoir within the city limits. On account of the dangerous 
shortage of the water supply of New York City, it was urgent that 
current construction work should be expedited and additional storage 
reservoirs provided such as he later created at Cross River and Croton 
Falls. 

The change of service from a large private corporation to the muni- 
cipality of New York with its charter restrictions and other limitations, 
opened many new problems which were handled with characteristic 
energy, foresight, and common sense. Mr. Smith realized the import- 
ance of securing an adequate technical staff, and, notwithstanding 
Civil Service and other restrictions, attached to his engineering organi- 
zation, experienced designing and constructing experts drawn from 
the staffs of the Metropolitan Water Board in Boston and from the 
New Jersey organizations of which he had been in charge. 

His record on the Croton project led to his appointment in the 
summer of 1905 as Chief Engineer of the largest and most important 
waterworks undertaking the world has ever seen, the additional supply 
for the City of New York from the Catskill Mountains. This project 
involved an expenditure up to 19 17 of about $175,000,000 for work 
which was performed on schedule time and at a cost of about $9,000,000 
less than the original estimates. This enormous enterprise included the 
Ashokan Reservoir located in the Catskill Mountains, about 16 miles 
west of Kingston-on-the-Hudson. This reservoir is 12 miles long, of 
a maximum depth of 190 feet and has a capacity sufficient to cover the 
entire Island of Manhattan for a depth of 30 feet, with its contents of 
132,000,000,000 gallons. The Catskill Aqueduct is 120 miles in 
length from this reservoir and extends under the City of New York 
to a terminal reservoir at Staten Island. The gravity aqueduct is 
about 17 feet high and 175^ feet wide. There is a tunnel under the 
Hudson River some 1 200 feet below water surface, through which the 
water flows under pressure. Three miles north of White Plains is a 
large storage reservoir formed by one of the great masonry dams of 
the world, 1850 feet long with a maximum height of 307 feet. Beneath 
the City of New York is a pressure tunnel 18 miles long and from 200 
to 750 feet in depth, driven in the rock with shafts through which 
water is delivered to existing distribution pipes. 

Mr. Smith gathered around him a technical staff of unusual compe- 
tence, insisted that they study the mistakes as well as the successes 
of similiar enterprises elsewhere and kept his own mind open to 
pronounce upon the adequacy of conclusions, not allowing himself to 
become absorbed in a mass of technical detail. The engineering 
organization, at times exceeding one thousand men, was imbued with a 

[ 102 ] 



JONAS WALDO SMITH 
-♦—•—— — — — — • . — — — ^.— *— 

remarkable esprit de corps which resulted in the highest grade of 
performance. Each man was made to feel that his individual effort 
and loyalty was an important factor in the success of the work. 

The accomplishment of this great enterprise is due chiefly to the 
rare combination in one man of technical skill of high order, and con- 
spicuous ability as a far-sighted business administrator and as a leader 
of men. 

Mr. Smith was elected to membership in the American Society of 
Civil Engineers in 1892, and served as Director of that Society from 
1906 to 1908 and as Vice-President in 19 13 and 19 14. In 19 18, 
Stevens Institute of Technology, conferred upon him the honorary 
degree of Doctor of Engineering and Columbia University the honorary 
degree of Doctor of Science. He is still Chief Engineer of the New 
York Board of Water Supply. 



[ 103 ] 



GENERAL GEORGE W. GOETHALS 




CrcE 



^ 



3553 



GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS 




HEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS was born 
June 29, 1858, at Brooklyn, New York, of Dutch 
parentage. His father came to this country at the 
age of 2 1, settling eventually in Brooklyn and engaging 
in business as a contractor. Here young Goethals 
attended the Brooklyn public schools until in 1871 
the family removed to New York. He entered the 
College of the City of New York in June, 1872, at the age of 14. After 
three years in college, where he earned his own way while pursuing 
his studies, he decided to become a surgeon and was preparing to 
enter the College of Physicians and Surgeons for a course of practical 
anatomy when he chanced to learn that "Sunset" Cox, the well-known 
New York Congressman, was about to nominate a candidate for West 
Point Mihtary Academy by competition among the public school pupils. 
The combination of hard study with night work to earn his way had 
seriously affected young Goethals' health and he decided to try for 
this appointment. In view of his record in school and college, a 
competitive examination was waived and he was appointed. 

Goethals entered West Point on April 21, 1876, and was graduated 
June 15, 1880, standing second in scholarship in a class of 54. He 
was one of the two members of his class selected for the Corps of 
Engineers, was chosen one of the four captains of the Cadet Corps, 
and was elected President of his class. He, therefore, in his West 
Point career, won highest distinction in scholarship, in military skill 
and in leadership among his associates — a rare trinity. 

Notwithstanding these honors he still had ambitions to become a 
surgeon instead of an engineer and seriously considered resigning his 
commission after graduation. The reflection that he would be obliged 
to support himself while he was pursuing his medical studies turned 
the scale in favor of the Army and he went on with the regular two 
years' post-graduate course of instruction at the Wiilets Point Engineer 
School, given to young engineer officers. 

Thenceforward for 25 years Goethals' work was of the usual sort 
which falls to the lot of the Army engineer, little known and little 
appreciated. Three times he gave instruction at West Point, first in 
1880, immediately after graduation, when he taught astronomy for a 
a short term, a four-year period from 1885 to 1889 and another tour 
of duty there ten years later. 

In 1882, after leaving Wiilets Point, he spent two years in the 
far Northwest as engineer officer on the staff of General Miles, 



[ 107 ] 



THE MEDALLISTS 



commanding the Department of the Columbia. He had a year on 
the Ohio River and a longer tour of duty beginning in 1889 on the 
Tennessee River. Here he completed the Mussel Shoals Canal and 
began the Colbert Shoals Canal. He recommended a 20-foot lift lock 
for the latter and it was approved by the Chief of Engineers, although 
his immediate superior had opposed it. He was next assigned to 
Washington as Assistant to the Chief of Engineers and was there when 
the war with Spain began. During this war, he was Chief Engineer of 
the First Army Corps under General Brooks and took part in the Porto 
Rican campaign. After the service in West Point, previously noted, he 
was placed in charge of river and harbor work in New England from 
Cape Cod to Point Judith. 

When the General Staff of the Army was organized in 1903, 
Goethals was selected as one of the Majors for duty thereon and was 
serving there when, on March 4, 1907, he was appointed by President 
Roosevelt a member of the Isthmian Canal Commission and shortly 
afterward was made its Chairman and Chief Engineer. 

Until that time, Goethals had been an unknown Army Engineer. 
Immediately his name was on the headlines of every newspaper. 

The engineering plans had been adopted and the work laid out, and 
construction work on the canal had been carried on for four years 
under two eminent civilian Chief Engineers, each of whom had 
resigned. The successive Commissions in charge of the work had not 
functioned well. 

President Roosevelt and Secretary of War Taft decided to put the 
work in charge of the Army engineers, and after very careful inquiry 
as to the Engineer Ofificer best qualified to carry this great executive 
responsibility, Goethals was chosen. 

The record of his ten years' work at Panama justifies the wisdom of 
that choice. From a superficial point of view the Panama Canal is a 
work stupendous in size but comparatively simple in character. To 
those who know its detail history, the story of the work is one long 
battle with giant difficulties, from the war against "yellow jack" in 
the early days to the contest with the slides that at the very comple- 
tion of the work threatened its success. And the contest with physical 
difficulties was less arduous than the "human engineering" involved. 

There was plenty of it required on the Isthmus to induce the army 
of workers to exert themselves on the job. There was no small amount 
needed in the United States, where Congress and a sensational press 
and suspicious public was always ready to lend ear to sensational 
rumors about the canal work. Through all these years it was 
Goethals' leadership that overcame all difficulties and achieved the 
final success. 

Republics are not always ungrateful. On March 4, 191 5, a special 
act of Congress tendered to Goethals the thanks of the Nation for the 
service on the canal and promoted him to the rank of Major-General. 

[ 108] 



r-g ^ t ) =- - ' — ffn £3 

GENERAL GEORGE W. GOETHALS 

» ' ■ '- " — ♦— 

Previous to this he had been appointed Governor of Panama and the 
Canal Zone, on April i, 19 14. At his own request he was placed on 
the retired list of the Army on November 15, 191 6, and was released 
from duty as Governor of the Zone on January 11, 191 7. 

Relieved thus from the service of the Government, after forty years 
as an army officer, he returned to New York City, his boyhood home, 
and began practice as a consulting engineer. The entry of the 
United States into the World War, only a few months later, brought 
him back into the Government service with larger responsibilities than 
ever. His first work was on the U. S. Shipping Board, where his 
opposition to the wholesale building of wooden vessels — an opposition 
which later events fully justified — was part of a controversy that lead 
to his resignation. 

In December, 19 17, he was appointed Acting Quartermaster-General 
of the Army. In January, 191 8, in addition to the duties of this office, 
he was made Director of Storage and Traffic, a division having charge 
of all the storage facilities for the War Department, the movement of 
all supplies and troops by rail and inland waters within the limits of 
the United States, together with the Embarkation Service, moving all 
men, troops and supplies from ports of the United States overseas. 

In May, 19 18, he undertook the consolidation of the purchase of 
all standard supplies for the Army, their storage and transportation. To 
this end, he was relieved from duty as Acting Quartermaster-General 
and assigned as Assistant Chief of Staff and Director of Purchase, 
Storage and Traffic. He continued in charge until he was relieved 
March 4, 19 19, at his own request, and returned to the retired list. 
He then resumed his private practice of engineering at New York City. 

General Goethals' war services were recognized on December 27, 
191 8, by the award of the Distinguished Service Medal "for especially 
meritorious and conspicuous service in reorganizing the Quartermaster 
Department and in organizing and administering the Division of 
Purchase, Storage and Traffic during the War." He was made 
Commander of the Legion of Honor by the French Government in 
January, 19 19, in recognition of the distinguished service rendered 
to the cause of France and the Allies in the war against the Central 
Powers, as "Directeur des Achats, Approvisionnements et Transports." 
On November 22, 19 19, he was made Knight Commander of St. 
Michael and St. George by the British Government **for distinguished 
service in the campaign as Chief of the Division of Purchases, etc., 
General Staff." 

General Goethals is a member of the American Society of Civil 
Engineers, a Fellow of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he 
holds Honorary Membership in the Society of Engineers at Panama, 
the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Institution of 
Civil Engineers (London), the Dutch Royal Society of Engineers, the 
American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia, the Northwestern 

[ 109 ] 



THE MEDALLISTS 



Society of Engineers, the Engineers Club of Philadelphia, and the 
Engineers Club of Chicago. 

In 19 1 2, he received three honorary degrees : D. Sc. from Columbia, 
LL. D. from Yale, and LL. D. from Harvard. He has also received 
the honorary degrees of D. Sc. from Rutgers, LL. D. from Princeton, 
LL. D. from the University of Pennsylvania, and LL. D. from Johns 
Hopkins University. 

He has received the President's medal of the Architectural League; 
the Panama Pacific International Exposition Medal and medals from the 
National Geographical Society, the American Geographical Society, 
the Geographical Society of Chicago, the National Institute of Social 
Science, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Civic Forum. 
On May 22, 19 19, he was awarded the John Fritz Medal "for achieve- 
ment as builder of the Panama Canal." 



[ "o ] 



ORVILLE WRIGHT 





ORVILLE WRIGHT 






|]RVILLE WRIGHT was born at Dayton, Ohio, 
August 19, 1 87 1, the fifth son of Bishop Milton Wright 
and Susan Catharine (Koerner) Wright. As a child he 
was full of energy, and interested in out-of-door sports. 
His mechanical bent was shown when, at the age of 
nine, he made by himself a small wood-turning lathe. 
At seventeen, while attending high school, he pub- 
lished a weekly paper the "West Side News," of which he was first 
editor and publisher. Later, his brother Wilbur joined him as editor 
and the two brought out a four-page, five-column daily paper "The 
Evening Item, " and still later, a weekly magazine entitled "Snap Shots." 
They made the printing presses on which the papers were printed. 
These were remarkable contrivances made principally of wood and 
strings, as it seemed to the curious visitors, some of whom came miles 
to see the presses run. 

From 1890 until the death of Wilbur in 19 12, the brothers were 
always together in all their work and interests ; so that during that 
time the work of one cannot be disassociated from that of the other. 
It was their practice when one advanced a theory on any subject for 
the other to take the opposite side, with the idea that if a fallacy 
existed it would thus be found. This saved much time and money in 
experiments which would have proved to be failures, and made it 
possible for them to carry to completion experimental work which 
otherwise would have been beyond their limited resources. 

In 1892, when the safety bicycle was coming into popular use, the 
brothers formed the "Wright Cycle Company," first to sell bicycles, 
but later to manufacture them. The output was small but the "Van 
Cleve" bicycle earned a reputation and is still remembered by Day- 
tonians, though it is twenty years since it was made. 

In the early nineties they became interested in flying, through 
reading articles on the subject in the magazines. They were especially 
interested in the experiments of the German, Lilienthal, who glided 
down hills on "wings." In 1896, Lilienthal met with an accident in 
his gliding experiments and was killed. Shortly after this Octave 
Chanute, of Chicago, made many experiments in gliding, the results of 
which were published in 1897. 

The following quotations indicate the state of the art at this time. 
The Aero Club of Washington said: 

"Lilienthal, Chanute, Langley, and Maxim are the four names that 
will ever be inseparably linked with the early stages of flying-machine 

[ 113 ] 



THE MEDALLISTS 



development, the stages that preceded the successful invention of the 
first man-carrying machine by the Wright brothers. These four men 
elevated an inquiry, which for years had been classed with such 
absurdities as the finding of perpetual motion and the squaring of the 
circle, to the dignity of a legitimate engineering pursuit" 

Wilbur Wright, writing of Chanute in 191 1, said: 

"If he had not lived, the entire history of progress in flying would 
have been other than it has been, for not only did he encourage the 
Wright brothers to persevere in their experiments, but it was due to 
his missionary trip to France in 1903 that the Voisins, Bleriot, Farman, 
De Lagrange, and Archdeacon were led to undertake a revival of 
aviation studies in that country, after the failure of the efforts of 
Ader and the French Government in 1897 had left everyone in idle 
despair. Although his experiments in automatic stability did not 
yield results which the world has yet been able to utilize, his labors 
had vast influence in bringing about the era of human flight. His 
'double-deck' modification of the old Wenham and Stringfellow 
machines will influence flying-machine design as long as flying 
machines are made." 

When the Wright brothers took up active experiments in 1899, the 
problem was not one of the motor, for motors lighter per horse power 
than the one they were soon to use had already been built. The 
problem was how to build wings of such efficiency that motors already 
known could propel them, and how to balance these wings when once 
they were in the air. 

In 1899, they built a large kite to test out their first invention, that 
of warping, or aileron control, and the next year a man-carrying glider 
to further test this and some other ideas on control. But these experi- 
ments, while seeming to demonstrate the value of their ideas, at the 
same time indicated the inaccuracy of the tables of air pressures from 
which the machine had been calculated. The first machines were 
based on tables of air pressures then generally accepted by scientific 
people. The wings would not support nearly so much as the tables 
had indicated. 

In 1 90 1, a larger machine was built, and hundreds of gliding flights 
were made with it. But this machine demonstrated conclusively that 
the then accepted tables of air pressures were not to be relied upon. 
It was also found in these experiments that the center of pressure on 
curved surfaces travelled in a direction opposite to that taught in the 
books. This year marked the turning point in their experiments, the 
conclusion being reached that nothing published was to be trusted 
without verification. What was generally accepted had proved to be 
untrue, and they undertook the establishment of a scientific basis for 
the calculation of aerodynamic phenomena. 

In the fall of 1901, a wind tunnel was set up, and with measuring 
balances of their own design, measurements of the lift and drift of 

[ "4 ] 



ORVILLE WRIGHT 

hundreds of different aerofoils were made. The effect of camber, of 
aspect ratio, and of superposing were learned. Tables showing the 
travel of the center of pressure on curved surfaces were made. At 
this time probably a hundred measurements for every one that had 
been made by all their predecessors were made ; but the importance 
of these measurements was due more to their accuracy than to their 
number. 

A new glider was then built based upon their own laboratory meas- 
urements and tested in more than one thousand gliding flights in the 
fall of 1902. These demonstrated the accuracy of their measurements. 
It was during these tests that their system of control was completed, 
so that at the end of these experiments they felt ready to design a 
motor-driven man-carrying machine which would fly with an ordinary 
motor and at the same time would be fully controllable in the air. 

But in the designing of a power machine several new problems 
presented themselves, the most important of which was that of the 
propeller. A study of marine engineering books disclosed that the 
water propeller, although in use a hundred years, was still based 
entirely on experiment. A complete theory of its reactions had never 
been worked out. The Wrights had neither the time nor the money 
to carry on experiments to develop an air propeller, and therefore were 
compelled to find some other way. After months of study and argu- 
ment a theory was arrived at from which it appeared possible to deter- 
mine by calculation the properties of a propeller. The propellers of 
their first machine were built entirely upon calculation, without any 
previous test, and had an efficiency scarcely exceeded today. 

The Wrights took the parts of their machine to Kitty Hawk, North 
Carolina, in September, 1903. The work of assembling being com- 
pleted, four successful flights were made on December 17. In these 
flights the machine raised itself from the ground with its own power 
and flew without loss of speed. The longest flight was of 59 seconds' 
duration. 

In 1904 and 1905, they continued experimenting near Dayton, Ohio, 
acquiring skill in the handling of the machine. The longest flights of 
1904 were two of five minutes each. In 1905, a number of flights 
of more than 1 5 minutes duration were made. The last flight of the 
year was the longest. A distance of about 24 miles was covered in 
38 minutes. The accounts of these flights published in Europe pro- 
duced much discussion. It was not believed possible that two obscure 
men unknown to the scientific world could so quietly solve a problem 
which had baffled man for ages. In 1908 and 1909, flights were made 
at home and abroad, which attracted universal attention. 

For his part in the achievement, Orville Wright has been honored 
with degrees from universities in the United States and Europe, with 
honorary membership in scientific and engineering societies of America, 
England, France, Germany and Austria; and with medals and decorations 

["5] 



^_^ ' "^'^■^- . frr T 

THE MEDALLISTS .. 



from the Congress of the United States, the State of Ohio, the Repubhc 
of France, the Smithsonian Institution, the John Fntz Medal 
Board the Franklin Institute, the French Academy of Sciences, the 
British Royal Society of Arts, and the leading aeronautical societies 
of America and Europe. 



[ ii6 ] 



SIR ROBERT A. HADFIELD 



st2^ 



W' 



CScSB 



E33»:;3 



SIR ROBERT ABBOTT HADFIELD 




"?IR ROBERT ABBOTT HADFIELD, the son of 
Robert Hadfield, was born in Sheffield, England, on 
November 29th, 1859. The Hadfield family, one of 
whom fought on Flodden Field in 15 13, came 
originally from Derbyshire. 

Sheffield is the center of the manufacture of high- 
grade steel in England, and it was that business in 
which the ancestors of Sir Robert were engaged. Two members of 
the family had been Master Cutlers of Sheffield, namely, Samuel 
Hadfield, who served as such in 1828 and again in 1837, and Sir John 
Brown. Various members of the family were also active in National 
and civic affairs ; one George Hadfield, was a Member of Parliament 
for 22 years, and Sir Robert's father, Robert Hadfield, served as a 
member of the Sheffield City Council for 14 years and also as Chair- 
man of its Highway Commission. 

Sir Robert was educated at the Sheffield Collegiate School where, 
in 1874, he won two scholarships and prizes in Natural Science and 
other subjects. In 191 1, Sheffield University conferred on him the 
Honorary Degree of the Faculty of Metallurgy (D. Met.), and in 
191 2, he received the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) 
from the University of Leeds. 

He had been in business a year before he entered the Laboratory 
of the Hecla Works, at Sheffield, which works were owned and 
operated by his father, thus beginning a career of remarkable scientific 
and technical achievement. 

In 1882, when he was 23 years old. Sir Robert discovered and 
invented manganese steel which combined qualities of great hardness 
and great ductility hitherto unknown in that metal. He afterward 
invented a low hysteresis steel which is especially suitable for trans- 
formers, dynamos and motors. These inventions have contributed 
much to the science of metallurgy and have resulted in vast improve- 
ments in the properties and manufacture of the better qualities of 
alloy steels, including protective armor-plate steel, and armor piercing 
projectiles. 

Since 1888, Sir Robert has been Chairman and Managing Director 
of Hadfield' s. Limited, the Hecla and the East Hecla Works at 
Sheffield. He has also served as Chairman of the Sheffield District 
Railway, Director of the Sheffield Gas Company, the Mond Nickel 
Company, and others. Following the family tradition, he was Master 
Cutler of Sheffield in 1899 and 1900. 



[ "9 ] 



e3 »o ■ •- ^ .,--,■=-,. vig a. ' sags? 

THE MEDALLISTS 



In 1908, he was knighted, and in 191 7, became a Baronet. 

Sir Robert possesses that rare combination of qualities which 
enables him to be successful as investigator, inventor, author, director 
of financial and industrial works, and public benefactor. 

As an inventor and financial and industrial works director. Sir 
Robert has built up Hadfield's, Limited, to be the greatest works for 
the manufacture of high-grade steel, alloy steel, and ordnance steel, in 
Great Britain. He has also introduced the manufacture of his manga- 
nese steel in America and his special cast ordnance steel in Japan and 
other countries. 

In 1 89 1, he introduced the 48-hour week in his works, being the 
first steel manufacturer to inaugurate this change. 

It has been stated that during the World War, more munitions for 
the British Navy were produced in his works than in those of any 
other manufacturer, and his manganese steel was found to be the most 
effective material for helmets and body armor, 9,000,000 helmets made 
of that steel having been used by the English, Belgian and American 
armies. 

For his invention of manganese steel, Sir Robert has been awarded 
medals and prizes by a number of scientific societies, among which are 
the Telford Gold Medal and Premium, awarded in 1888, by the Insti- 
tution of Civil Engineers; the Gold Medal, awarded in 1890, by the 
Society d' Encouragement pour ITndustrie Nationale de France; the 
John Scott Medal and Premium, awarded in 1891, by the Franklin 
Institute; and the Bessemer Gold Medal, awarded in 1904, by the 
Iron and Steel Institute. He has also received medals and prizes 
for his work in alloys of iron and steel, and for his advancement of 
the science of metallurgy, from the Institution of Civil Engineers, the 
Institution of Electrical Engineers, the Franklin Institute, and the 
Soci6t6 d' Encouragement pour ITndustrie Nationale de France. 

As an author. Sir Robert has published more than one hundred 
monographs, many of which describe important investigations and dis- 
coveries made by himself and others in connection with metallurgical 
work. 

He is a member of many scientific societies in Great Britain and 
other countries and has done much to increase their usefulness to the 
technical world by his support and writings. He has served as Presi- 
dent of the Iron and Steel Institute and the Faraday Society, and as 
Vice-President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Insti- 
tution of Mining and Metallurgy, and the Royal Society of Arts. He 
is a Fellow of the Royal Society, Institute of Chemistry, Chemical 
Society, Royal Aeronautical Society, Institute of Physics, and the 
Physical Society, and an Honorary Member of the K. Venska Vetensk 
Akademie (Stockholm), American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical 
Engineers, American Iron and Steel Institute, American Steel Treaters' 
Association, British Foundrymen's Association, Sheffield Association 

[ 120 ] 



SIR ROBERT A. HADFIELD 

-»_ „4_ 

of Metallurgical Chemists, Soci6t6 des Ingenieurs Civils de France, 
and the Athenaeum Club of London. 

His public services have included those of Justice of the Peace for 
Sheffield since 1896, Chairman of the Ferrous Section of the Advisory 
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, member of the Arbitra- 
tion Panel, of the Senate and Court of Governors of the University 
of Sheffield, member of the Board, and Executive, of the National 
Physical Laboratory, and member of the Advisory Panel of the Muni- 
tions Inventions Department. In 191 7, he was elected a Freeman of 
the City of London. 

During the World War, Sir Robert supported, from November, 19 14, 
to January, 19 19, the Hadfield Hospital at Wimereux, France, at 
which approximately 16,000 cases were treated. For this service to 
the nation, he received special letters of thanks from the Prime 
Minister and others. He was also awarded a bronze medal by the city 
authorities of Boulogne, France, for aid rendered the St. Louis 
Hospital at that place. 

The John Fritz Gold Medal was awarded Sir Robert in 192 1 for the 
"invention of manganese steel." 



[121 ] 



CHARLES PROSPER EUGENE SCHNEIDER 




ESSE 



mA 



CHARLES PROSPER EUGENE SCHNEIDER 




HHARLES PROSPER EUGENE SCHNEIDER, 

ironmaster, was born at Le Creusot, France, October 
29, 1868, the descendant from a family of Lorraine. 
His forbears had been in the iron business for several 
generations. Joseph Eugene Schneider created the 
firm of Schneider & Cie., which purchased the ancient 
works at Le Creusot. His son, Henri, succeeded him 
as head of the firm. Eugene, the subject of the present sketch, grew 
up in the business and succeeded his father, Henri, in 1898. 

In speaking of the metallurgical works at Le Creusot it helps to 
visualize them by mentioning Essen and Bethlehem. These are the 
great metallurgical plants of the world wherein armaments and ordnance 
have become the specialties. As such establishments they played 
predominant parts in the Great War. In the cause of the allied and 
associated poM^ers Le Creusot was pre-eminent. It was mainly through 
the foresight of Eugene Schneider that his ancestral business was put 
in a position to play this important part and become not only a national, 
but also an international, asset. As early as 1895, the Schneider 
establishments made special efforts to improve heavy and light field 
ordnance, and created the quick-firing type, the appearance of which 
produced a revolution in the tactics of modern artillery. 

While giving to peace industries all the attention necessitated by 
the progress in science and the continual improvement in industrial 
methods and products, Eugene Schneider, with a discernment that 
subsequent events amply justified, especially directed his efforts toward 
the creation in France of a war industry able to counterbalance the 
enormous power which the German war industry had established. 
The task was rendered difficult inasmuch as the French government, 
supplied by its own arsenals, placed few orders with private concerns; 
and moreover the Krupp works had known how to establish a pre- 
eminence throughout the world, helped toward that by the now familiar 
commercial methods of Germany and through the fact that a French 
law, abrogated only in 1882, had prohibited the export to foreign 
countries of war materials. 

After comparative trials, made in numerous countries between Krupp 
and Schneider guns, the latter were adopted (in spite of the Krupp in- 
fluence and prestige) by virtue of their superiority, duly ascertained 
by military commissions. By the time of the Great War, most of the 
nations that did not do their own manufacturing had replaced Krupp 
artillery by that of Schneider. This led to a development in the 

[ 125] 



THE MEDALLISTS 



-♦«- 



manufacture of war materials that proved immensely helpful to the 
French government. In the Schneider works, not only were units of 
various calibers found completed, or in the course of manufacture, 
for foreign governments, but also there were shops ready immediately 
to undertake artillery and ammunition manufacture and a competent 
staff trained for those difficult tasks, which was able to assist in 
starting nurnerous other shops that had not previously been used for 
this kind of work. 

The artillery and munitions, delivered in very large quantities during 
the war to the French and Allied governments, were of widely varied 
types : field guns and howitzers (heavy and light types), siege guns, 
guns of large caliber on railway mounts, tanks, shells, fuses, explosives, 
torpedoes, sights, submarine and airplane engines, and armor plate. 

Not only in France, but also in Russia, Italy, and England, the 
Schneider engineers initiated numerous works for war manufacture 
e specially in the preparation of special gun and shell steels. The American 
Government adopted for its ordnance the 155 and 240 mm. howitzers 
and railway mounts for large caliber guns, according to the Schneider 
models. This ordnance, which brilliantly proved its superiority on 
European battlefields, was manufactured in American arsenals, with 
the technical help of agents from the Schneider works. 

Under the enlightened management of Eugene Schneider the 
establishments of his firm were largely extended previous to the war, 
their activity being not only directed to increasing production, but also 
to spreading more and more their scope for action in all branches of 
industry — in metallurgy, mechanical and electrical construction, ship- 
building, artillery and ammunition, and in public works. During the 
ten years immediately preceding the war, the number of employees in 
these establishments, and without counting those of the more and 
more numerous subsidiaries, increased by approximately 50 per cent. 
In 191 8 they were employing 150,000 workmen. 

Besides the technical and industrial development of the works, 
Eugene Schneider gave steadily his attention to social economics for 
the welfare of his employees, following the traditions from his ancestors. 
All questions pertaining to the happiness and scale of living of his 
workmen commanded his enthusiastic attention and often received 
solutions that were much in anticipation of laws. Among these subjects 
were schools, technical instructions, evolution of salaries, inducements 
to saving, old age pensions, allowances for the sick and the wounded, 
medical attention, hospitals, hygiene and safety conditions, and mutual 
aid societies, etc. 

Eugene Schneider has received many honors and has performed 
many duties besides those directly associated with his business. From 
the death of his father in 1898 until 19 10, he served as a member 
of the Chamber of Deputies. He was elected to the Presidency of 
the British Iron and Steel Institute in 19 18 and served in that 

[ 126] 



CHARLES PROSPER EUGENE SCHNEIDER 

-♦ — '■ '■ ' ■ ■■—*- 

capacity until 1920. At the same time he was honorary chairman of 
the Comit6 des Forges de France. 

In 19 19, the Minmg and MetaUurgical Society of America awarded 
to him the gold medal for "distinguished service in the metallurgy of 
iron and steel." This medal was presented to him during a visit to 
the United States in 1919. During the same visit he was elected to 
honorary membership in the American Iron and Steel Institute and 
the degrees of Doctor of Science were conferred upon him by the 
University of Pittsburgh and Western Reserve University, and Doctor 
of Engineering by the Stevens Institute of Technology; and he was 
given the freedom of the City of Pittsburgh. On July 8, 192 1, at 
Paris, M. Schneider received the John Fritz gold medal at the hands 
of a deputation of American engineers sent there for the purpose. 



[ 127 ] 



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